People spoke courageously of вЂњthe new normalвЂќ but did not yet understand that вЂњnormalвЂќ was gone. Australians had been in lockdown for months even before the year began, fighting fires that had started at the end of winter, cowering indoors from smoke, heat and ash, and wearing masks on their brief forays outside.

There was barely a moment to breathe between bushfires and Covid. Scott Morrison attends a state memorial honouring victims of the Australian bushfires in Sydney. The effort to stymie sensible policy reform after the fires was as pernicious as the failure to plan in advance of them. Yet these fires were overwhelmingly started by dry lightning in remote terrain, and hazard-reduction burning is constrained by a warming climate. The crisis could not be acknowledged in case it gave credence to the need for climate action.ДЄs if neglect and omission in the face of the fire threat were not enough, Coalition politicians and their apologists then hastily encouraged lies about the causes of the fires, declaring that they were started by arsonists and that greenies had prevented hazard-reduction burns.

Throughout 2019, fire experts had pleaded with the federal government to hold a bushfire summit to prepare for the dreaded summer, but the prime minister had refused. For months, experts and bush residents had been preparing for a tumultuous fire season and here on the first day of 2020 was a frightening climax. The day brought evacuations, road closures, panic buying, collective fear and a surge of dire predictions. Sleepless tourists and residents faced the dawn of the new year without power, fuel or mobile-phone reception, and some without homes. For on New YearвЂ™s Eve, the savage summer had pulsed into frightening ferocity on the New South Wales south coast and in East Gippsland. His opening gambit was this sentence: вЂњOn New YearвЂ™s Day, no major economist, no famous medical scientist and no political leader had predicted that this would be a tumultuous year.вЂќ Only a defiant climate sceptic could have been so uncurious about the events unfolding that day and so dismissive of expertise. In mid-June the historian Geoffrey Blainey, writing in the Australian in defence of colonial statues, looked back on the first day of the year. Systemic racism is the virus, declared Black Lives Matter protesters. They came together in the colonisation of Australia when the conquering British brought smallpox, scorned Indigenous rights and fought Aboriginal fire with gunfire. Fire, plague and racism are always with us, percolating away, periodically erupting, sometimes converging.

Born in the fire america