Wildfires are nature’s tangible equivalent to the fictional phoenix. Similar to the phoenix, a mythological firebird that is reborn from its own ashes, wildfires, in nature’s endless pursuit for balance, cremates the dead and decaying matter to give life to new entities. However, in recent times, it appears that nature’s delicate equilibrium of life and death and calm and chaos has become precarious and fluctuating.
In August of 2019, the Amazon rainforest, known as the lungs of our planet, caught on fire. Two months prior, Australia’s ongoing deadly bushfires that now ravages its country began. With the most devastating fires occurring back to back, fire season now appears to be all four seasons throughout the globe.
2019 Amazon Forest Fire
For Brazil, 2019 saw the highest amount of recorded fires since 2010 with an estimated 40.6 million acres of land being ravaged by 87,000 wildfires. As in many forested regions, wildfires in the Amazon can occur during the dry season as a result of natural occurrences, however in the case of the 2019 fires, it was the human touch that truly ignited this disaster. In the wake of multiple cutbacks for environmental research and protection, notably with the revision of Brazil’s Forest Code and its federal science budget being reduced by 44%, the epidemic of deforestation has continued to run rampant in the Amazon, acting as the fuel and catalyst for these devastating fires. In the case of the 2019 fires, it was the cattle ranchers and loggers, emboldened by their president’s actions, that set the forest ablaze to clear land and unknowingly sparked one of the worst fires ever to have occurred in the treasured rain forest.
To understand the issue of deforestation in Brazil, one simply has to look to the government corruption woven deep in President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. For instance, TIME Magazine reports Bolsonaro had Brazil’s environmental agency fire an agent who had fined him years go for illegal fishing and Bolsonaro himself fired the head of Brazil’s space agency after the agency “released new satellite data showing a 278% increase in deforestation in July compared to the same period last year.” With the use of the president’s power for personal gain, Bolsonaro has devastatingly smothered any environmentally protective action, punishing those working to reduce the human footprint in and around the Amazon. Ultimately, it is the executive branch’s abuse of power that has given the green light for deforestation.
Australian Bushfires
The 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire has been one of the most devastating fire seasons that Australia has seen. Spanning 27 million acres, the fires have so far engulfed 2,500 homes and killed over a billion animals and at least 29 people. However, contrary to the Amazon forest fires that were directly enkindled by human negligence, the bushfires are a product of a much broader problem: climate change.
Extreme weather patterns, compounded by climate change, have reinforced the strength of the fires. As a matter of fact, 2019 was Australia's hottest year to date, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees fahrenheit in December (3 degrees below the all-time high) and towns experiencing 28 consecutive days of temperatures over 104 degrees. These long lasting periods of intense heat throughout Australia have fueled the bushfires by warming the air and preheating surrounding fuel, resulting in the nation being further engulfed in flames.
The enhanced evaporation rates and reduction in rainfall associated with rising temperatures have additionally resulted in the worsening of droughts in Australia. Notably, Researchers at the University of Melbourne have claimed “that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years” following their reconstruction of Australian rainfall patterns that span the last 800 years. For context, the National Geographic reports that Sydney’s largest dam had its water levels fall by 18% in a single year. Southern Australia is familiar with dry, arid conditions, however the growing population coupled with a changing climate have only perpetuated the devastating droughts as water use intensifies while water supply diminishes. With these periods of drought drying out vegetation, fires in Australia, whether caused by nature or by human recklessness, have been able to ignite with ease.
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