This archive report was first published on 21 November 2019.
Published on November 21, 2019, as Australia's largest city, Sydney, was shrouded in hazardous smoke, Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended his climate record, saying the country was 'doing our bit'.
However, his comments came after weeks of refusing to speak about the link between climate change and the deadly fires described by emergency services as unprecedented in number and scale for the early bushfire season.
"The suggestion that any way shape or form that Australia -- accounting for 1.3 percent of the world's emissions... are impacting directly on specific fire events, whether it is here or anywhere else in the world, that doesn't bear up to credible scientific evidence," Morrison told ABC radio.
Despite the Prime Minister's dismissal of mounting calls for action, scientists, former fire chiefs, and residents touched by bushfires have all drawn the link between this season's more intense fires and climate change.
Drought, unseasonably hot, dry, and windy conditions have fuelled the unprecedented blazes, with scientists believing many of those factors are made worse by rising global temperatures.
On Thursday, bushfires burned across every region of Australia, with residents in Victoria warned to leave high-risk areas and officials in New South Wales reporting more than 600 homes have been destroyed in recent weeks.
As the country braces for challenging fire conditions to continue throughout the Southern Hemisphere summer, the Prime Minister is facing calls to cut greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly transition to renewable energy.
'Code red' ¶
Devastating fires along the country's east coast have claimed six lives since mid-October, with a so-called 'Code Red' -- the highest possible fire risk in Victoria -- being declared in the state's northwest for the first time in a decade.
"What that means is that if we see fires in those areas they will be fast-moving, they will be unpredictable, they will be uncontrollable," emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp said.
