Every once in a while, a piece of flotsam drifts up from the ocean of forgettable catastrophes that circle the earth.
A reel, an image, or a headline smacks you in the face like a wet fish and makes you sit up straight and pay attention.
This happened to me as I ate my breakfast while surfing the calamitous seas of human stupidity and fear — which I agree is a stupid and fearful thing to do at any time, but particularly first thing in the morning.
But I’m only human.
Anyway, what caught my attention was a headline: ‘Burnham-on-Sea fire crews called to tackle large wildfire near Axbridge’ — which would be an unprintable mouthful for a newspaper, but not for the internet apparently.
Burnham-on-Sea is a small, nondescript seaside town in Somerset where I grew up and Axbridge is an even smaller medieval village with a town square and a 15th-century timber-framed building called King John’s Hunting Lodge on the corner.
It’s not the sort of place I would ever imagine to be threatened by a wildfire.
I’m sure the same could be said of hundreds of villages in France and Spain where fires have erupted with unprecedented rage for the past month.
Wildfires in France have now scorched more than 160,000 ha, while ferocious blazes also threaten Italy, Greece and Turkey.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated, while scientists are saying that Europe is joining a list of regions from Siberia to the Amazon that now experience back-to-back extreme fire seasons.
Yes, I know the media likes to catastrophise everything because bad news spreads like wildfire and creates more clicks than a pobblebonk on heat, but all these reports do beg some very direct questions, starting with: what on earth is going on?
And when do we start to take this climate change thing seriously?
I’ll start with the first question.
Scientists are still trying to work out why Europe is heating at more than twice the global average, and answers could change because this is science and not a conservative party policy.
But some things are known.
European climate is influenced by its closeness to the Arctic where temperatures are increasing because of a heating loop caused by melting ice, which exposes darker ocean water to more sunlight.
That water then releases more heat back into atmosphere, which leads to more ice melting.
Simple and scary.
However, the scarier part is that this is not a surprise.
We have known about the dangers of global warming for decades, but we just haven’t adapted fast enough.
The European fires are a sign that the devastating effects of climate change are not something that might happen in the future — they are happening right now.
The answer to the second question is more complicated, but as with most intractable political problems, if you follow the money you’ll find an answer.
Seriously adapting to climate change means somebody, somewhere is going to lose money.
We know what we have to do — stop using fossil fuels, move to renewable energy, make our homes and industry more energy efficient, electrify transport, stop cutting down trees, eat more plant-based food.
That all comes with a price.
The European fires show we either step up the pace of change or we burn.
In Australia, we cope with the devastation of bushfire every year, and every fire season is uncharted territory.
For the sake of our grandchildren and their children, we must always hope for the best, but at the same time seriously prepare for the worst.
John Lewis is a former reporter at The News.
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