Germaine Greer gets it right.
Germaine Greer, in The Times of London, sets the record straight on the role of global warming in bushfires:
FIRE is an essential element in the life cycle of Australian forests. Season by season sclerophyll or hard-leaved woodlands build up huge amounts of detritus, which must burn if there is to be new growth.
For 40 or maybe 60 millennia, Aboriginal peoples managed fire proactively, setting alight woodland, scrubland and grassland, so that they could pass freely, so that game was driven towards them, so that fresh green herbage was available. Aboriginal languages have dozens of words for fire. As the Endeavour sailed up the eastern coast, Captain Cook noted that the skies were darkened with smoke by day and lit up by fire at night.
Bushland that is not burned regularly turns into a powder keg, as the fuel load inexorably increases. The cause of these disasters is not global warming; still less is it arson. It is the failure to recognise that fire is an intrinsic feature of eucalypt bushland. It cannot be prevented but it can and should be managed. Unless there is a fundamental change of policy across all levels of government in Australia, there will be more and worse fires and more deaths.