If you live in eastern NSW, ignore the evidence of your own senses. There's no smoke choking Sydney. Everything you think is happening - waking up to sickening choking smoke that seeps into every corner of the house despite following advice to keep the windows closed, the skyline obliterated, buildings being evacuated in the city as smoke alarms are triggered, flights delayed, ash washing up on beaches, paramedics attending hundreds of cases of breathing difficulties, slogging through work and the daily routine in air rated ten times worse than "hazardous", ending the day under eerie skies, dark at 4pm in the middle of summer, a blood red sun, knowing that tomorrow will be no better - that's not really what's going on. Forget the fear you have for friends and family outside the city, that they may lose their lives in the monstrous fires sending this smoke over the city. Everything is fine.
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| Inner Sydney six days ago. It's since gotten much worse; can't see the skyline at all. But it's okay. |
If you live in regional NSW, surrounded by bush, ignore that the bush is burning. Don't worry that 99.8% of the state is in the grip of a punishing, extended drought. 1.9 million hectares has burnt this fire season, 10% of NSW forest land, but it's not that big a deal. Ignore that you've been subject to fire warnings that oscillate from "watch and act" to "emergency" for weeks. Ignore that you've had to evacuate multiple times, that you've been told it's too late to leave, that you fear you may lose your home, that you're one of 600 who have lost their homes. Ignore the dread and fear that has become part of daily life. Ignore that 6 people are dead. Ignore that there has been little in the way of assistance for fire hit communities. Forget that so much bush has burnt that koalas may now be functionally extinct, so much of their habitat has burnt and so many thousands of them have died. Everything is fine.
Fire services are well resourced and not having to crowd fund for supplies:
Everything is fine.This just makes me sick to my stomach. We have heroes putting their own lives on the line to save communities and sadly they are seeking charity for basic items. Our politicians need a good kick up the arse and should all be ashamed of themselves. @AlboMP @ScottMorrisonMP #auspol pic.twitter.com/mtld2XwLGD— Bill Bashford (@bill81904733) December 8, 2019
If you ignore the smoke that is nothing to worry about, you can sleep soundly tonight. Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants to reassure you that everything is fine. There is no crisis needing him to clear his schedule and oversee the relief efforts. He wouldn't be flying from Canberra to Sydney to attend Lachlan Murdoch's Christmas drinks if there was actually an emergency would he? He wouldn't be faffing around at the cricket and taking the weekend off if there was a real fire disaster unfolding. Scott Morrison wants you to know that fire fighters are well resourced, not in need of any more funding; those crowd funding campaigns are probably going towards Netflix and stereos for the fire trucks, not desperately needed supplies. Firefighters aren't overstretched, exhausted volunteers away from their jobs for weeks, their own homes under threat; none of that matters because they want to be there. No need for the army or airforce to get involved in the firefighting efforts. Sharing memes like this:
is pointless and childish. Everything is fine.
Our Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, agrees with him. There's nothing happening worth addressing the media or visiting affected communities about. She's opening zoos and cutting funding to fire services and national parks.
If you believe our Prime Minister that everything is fine, you can forget that Sydney has become Patient Zero for climate change; that this isn't happening in Beijing, a city choked from the smoke of coal shipped from Australia. It's simply not true that Sydney presents a vision of the future under climate change, one the whole world is watching; raised temperatures, cities choking in smog, the tourism industry wiped out, homes and lives lost, life for those who remain under a pitiless clouded blood red sky. We are not choking on our own hubris, the years of warnings that the balance of the atmosphere had been tipped out of control, that the planet is in big trouble. That was all climate alarmism we were right to ignore. Scott Morrison has reveled in his love of coal for years, and denied there was anything to worry about from an economy so closely weeding to a dying polluting industry, that Australia needed to take any action on carbon emissions, and now here we are, watching our world burn, but Scott Morrison is here to assure us that like climate change itself, this is nothing to worry about. Today is the day to talk about religious discrimination bills, not bush fires and climate change. Everything is fine.
The media quite agrees:
They're not asking him questions because they have faith in his wisdom. All this is no big deal. We're all making a fuss over nothing. Why should we look at all this and wonder what we have unleashed and when it will end. There is nothing to look at.It’s so weird to me that the press isn’t baying for Morrison’s political blood. They’ve hounded other leaders for less than watching the entire east coast burn and have a major city constantly wreathed in smoke— STEMLORD Supremely Elastic Gel Polymer (@upulie) December 10, 2019
Everything is fine.
If despite the assurances of our leaders you continue to believe all this is a problem, you can make a donation to the Rural Fire Service here.
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