From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM. As wildfires tore through some of LA's most affluent neighborhoods, burning down mansions owned by celebrities, some wondered if it might be a turning point in how seriously we take the climate crisis, but climate scientist Joel Gergis wasn't sharing
that hope. Instead, what she saw made her angry that we seem more interested in the heartache of the wealthy while the effects of climate change continue to disproportionately affect the poor, and that as Californians lose their homes and their lives, a climate deny it has entered the White House. Now she's turning her attention to the next election here in Australia, where she says we have a choice to
make about how comfortable we are being complicit today. Climate scientist and contributor to The Saturday Paper, Joel Gergis on why the next election is a fork in the road for our climate. It's Friday, January twenty fourth, So Joel, I thought we could start by talking about the wildfires that we saw in California recently, as you watched them unfold, as you watched the suburbs of La Burn and saw people and animals dying.
What were you thinking, Well, so many things were running through my mind, I guess as an Australian, my mind went immediately back to the memories of that horrendous black summer bushfire season of twenty nineteen twenty twenty, and that was when we saw close to a quarter of our temperate forest burn in a single bushfire season.
We were warned of catastrophic conditions and right now there are seven fires burning at emergency level. A powerful Southerly is currently moving through, making can additions for firefighters even more chaotic.
You know, over half of our ancient rainforests we incinerated during this event and over three million.
Animals were killed or displaced.
And even during that event, the choler was listed as an endangered species in New South Wales. And so it was one of those things that that was a real pivotal moment for me where I realized that what used to be considered an extreme outline in today's climate will become average conditions in the future. And so it's been a real wake up call to me as a scientist that I need to be doing more to warn the public about the threats we're facing, not only here in
Australia but also around the world. In terms of the Californian wildfires. Really it's a textbook example of what we can expect with a warming planet.
So California experience.
It's hot, a summer on record, and a severe drought that saw just four millimeters of rainfall since October last year, and so basically the landscape just burnt because everything.
Had dried out, and it burned all the way to.
The coastline, which is pretty phenomenal if you stop and you think about and during winter.
Of course, all tens of thousands are still under evacuation orders tonight, with just some residents allowed back just now seeing the devastation firsthand, and the fight is far from over, Sirius Santa Anna. Winds are forecast and for tomorrow bringing risk of large fire growth.
It's really just a sign of an overheating planet. It's also a sign of what we can expect. But it does give me chills as an Australian scientist watching these events unfolding, because I know what it means for us here at home.
And as that crisis was unfolding in California News broke that we've just experienced Earth's warmest year on record twenty twenty four, So, I mean, that's obviously related to the fires. Can you tell me about why it is that we're seeing fires on this scale right now?
So basically just comes back down to humanity's relentless burning of fossil fuels. So that's the burning of coal, oil, and gas that will continue to drive up temperatures until.
We reach net zero emissions.
So really, until we do that, there's going to be no letup of this warming trend. And in fact, as you said, while these fires were burning, leading scientific organizations around the world had confirmed that twenty twenty four was the year's warmest year on record. And also another interesting fact in there was that the top ten warmest years have all occurred since twenty fifteen, so really the last
decade has been the warmest in our planet's history. And in fact, twenty twenty four was the first year that global temperatures have exceeded the Paris Agreements goal of one
point five degrees. And the real problem with this is that global greenhouse gas concentrations reached record highs last year, so there's no clear decline in sight, and in fact, methane, which is a really powerful heat trapping gas that's around eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide, has risen really sharply, and it's got a lot of scientists worried because of its role in triggering periods of abrupt climate change in
the Earth history. And the other issue here is that many countries, including Australia, are currently promoting methane or natural gas as a transition fuel, with no scientifically credible plan to transition away from any time before twenty fifty. So until we get serious about turning the fossil fuel tap off, the planet is just going to continue to warm, and so it's going to get ugly.
And the wildfires while they were burning, they dominated the news cycle, and that was, of course because of the scale of them, but it was also because of the people who were affected, the celebrities who are losing their homes. And I just wonder what you made of the fact that this attracted the attention it did compared to other climate related crises that have happened in other parts of the world on a regular basis.
I started to find myself getting a little bit angry. Actually when I was watching the media, because I guess this uncomfortable reality we need to face is that Western media is more interested in covering the losses and the heartache of white, rich people rather than those of dark skinned, poorer people.
Celebrities are speaking out as devastating wildfires spread through southern California. The fast moving.
Fires Lucy neighborhoods its home to the likes of Reese Witherspoon.
Ban Affleck Toma Haggs all were evacuated.
We're getting word, you know, as the hours go by, of more celebrities who have, yes, actually not just been threat of losing their property, but have actually lost homes.
The Californian wildfires attracted a lot of attention because of the fact that I guess you know, some of the most iconic areas of America were being impacted by the fires.
And the Western meat is also really obsessed with Hollywood culture.
So as we've seen in the recent coverage, journalists have this inane fixation on reporting news of Burt mansions of Hollywood celebrities like Billy Crystal or Mel Gibson or Paris Hilton, instead of making that connection between how fossil fuels are driving climate change and how that's destabilizing our world in
the form of these really extreme events. And around about one hundred and fifty thousand people in LA were ordered to evacuate, but there was no mention made of the over twenty million people that were internally displaced because of weather disasters in twenty twenty three. So that's the year where we have the latest figures, and so I'm pretty sure most of those people did not have the luxury
of paying private firefighters to save their homes. And it really highlights the inequalities entrenched in this issue and how surreal this whole situation has become.
And there was this sentiment that I heard from some people that perhaps this crisis in California, because of all the attention that it's receiving, would actually end up somehow changing the course of our response to the climate crisis, that it might raise enough attention somehow for people I suppose to take it more seriously. Is that naive?
Yeah?
I saw that too on social media, and I would say it's probably a case of just wishful thinking. I mean, as a climate scientist, it's really hard not to feel cynical when people say that perhaps an event like the la fires are going to be the moment where the world finally wakes up to the reality of climate change. And the truth is that this is just another event that people will eventually tire of and the media circus
will move on. And the reality also here is that the climate change denier Donald Trump was sworn into the White House this week and a time where the world is facing just an unprecedented confluence of global disasters.
The new US.
President is expected to pull the world's second largest greenhouse gasimit out of the Paris Agreement, and he's been bragging about his pro fossil fuel use in terms of his policy.
Of drill, baby drill, He's not the only one.
Well.
Governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in twenty thirty that is consistent with limiting warming to one point five degrees. So coal production is expected to continue until then, with oil and gas extending out to at least twenty fifty. So in my life, I view things that are going to get a lot
worse before they get better. And really it's a case of our political leaders and our business leaders having the courage to put a price on carbon and remove the fossil fuel subsidies that are blocking the renewable energy transition. And until then, we're just going to see these worsening weather extremes that are going to upend our lives and reconfigure life on the planet.
After the break, what will it take for Australian leaders to turn off the fossil fuel tap? Joelle, let's talk a little more about our political leaders here in Australia, because we are of course getting close to another federal election. So what do you make of the debate that we're hearing around climate at the moment and whether it's urgent enough.
I mean, I think that the climates is still alive in Australia, but we have come a long way and I do think that the next federal election is a really fateful fork in the road for our nation. So we really have a clear choice between leaders who are trying to keep the country on track to decarbonize our economy and those who want to lead us down our
nuclear power dead end. So the fact of the matter is is that renewables are the cheapest and the cleanest form of energy and it can be deployed really, really quickly. We don't have to wait until the twenty forties or twenty fifties for nuclear power, because Australia actually is the sunniest consonant on the planet, and yet only eighteen percent of our electricity is generated by solar, so that is
an enormous economic advantage that we're currently squandering. And while the Labor government has made some good progress on renewables, so currently there's nearly forty percent of Australia's electricity is now powered by clean energy sources. But the government runs the risk of undoing all of this good work by continuing to support fossil fuel production.
And so do you think that there are areas or ways of responding to the climate crisis that are still untapped, things that we could or should be doing that would provide a roadmap FRAWD and some hope in terms of combating what's ahead.
Well, yeah, I mean there's a range of scientific agencies that have shown that it's possible to reduce global emissions between fifty and eighty percent by twenty thirty using technologies that are available right now. And even the CSO has shown that the fossil fuel intensive nation like Australia could
Harvard's emissions by twenty thirty using existing technology. So in that report they identify the decarbonization of the electricity sector as the way to unlock Australia's clean energy transition in other areas like green manufacturing and electrified.
Transport and things like that.
So really we just need this new generation of leaders to foster that political, social, and economic environment. We need to incentivize the clean energy transition and really, once the benefits of the green economy start to be realized, we won't look back.
Our only regret will be that we didn't start any sooner.
And as you say, though the current Labor government is still committed to mining fossil fuels, that doesn't seem likely to change. How do you envision a way of I suppose putting pressure on that.
Well, this is where I feel that how we vote really really matters, and that Australia's next federal election is a really faithful fork in the road for our nation. And the more that we understand that as voters we
can influence our political leadership into doing better. So if the electorate really wants to see real climate action, because you know, sometimes there's a lot of hollow words when we talk about climate change, in climate action being this in citious phraser that I don't love actually, but I think it comes down to people being really aware of
the connection between the burning of fossil fuels. So whether those fossil fuels are burned here within Australia's borders or overseas with our trading partners, the atmosphere doesn't really care where those fossil fuels originated.
The fact is is they pollute the environment.
They're driving up temperatures and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is leading to more and more extreme weather. And so you know, this is the time to not stand on the sidelines. We really have to engage in our political conversation and what we do as australiager really matters. As the third largest exporter of fossil fuels, what we do in terms of our ethical.
Stance and our moral stance on this really matters. Joelle, Thank you for your time, Oh pleasure, Ruby, thanks a lot.
Also in the news today, one of Australia's biggest music festivals, Splendor in the Grass, has been canceled for the second year in a row. The festival previously announced it would be canceling the twenty twenty four event, just weeks after it announced its lineup with Kylie Minogue as the headliner on social media. Splendor in the Grass organizers have now posted twenty twenty five won't be going ahead either, but
we'll be back when the time is right. And a huge foul smelling flower has bloomed in Sydney and will emit its stench for twenty four hours only. The rare and endangered flower, known as the corpse flower and nicknamed Patricia, is on display at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Corpse flowers are usually found in the West Sumatran rainforests and there are estimates that there are only one thousand specimens left in the wild. Seven Am is a daily show from
Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Basto, Shane Anderson, Chris Engate, Daniel James, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah McVie, Travis Evans and Zolnfetcho. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of envelop Portio. See you next week.