The 2019/2020 Australian Bushfires: An inadvertent philosophical investigation
Writing about this now feels absurd, like writing about a distant historical footnote. The worst bushfires in Australian history committed, too soon, to our collective memory by the global pandemic that immediately succeeded them. Yet here I go, writing away.
I’ll be candid with my aim here; I hope to butter up the reader with the intrigue of a personal journey, before bombarding them with the doctrine of the activist philosopher. So, let us begin.
A commonly spouted anthropological factoid is that the control of fire is what set humans on course to become the dominant species on Earth. It also seems to be well-accepted that this human dominance, accompanied by significant technological advancement, gives us a means to control fire as never before. Yet, as I began to pack my car in mid-November, methodically checking my camping equipment for damage or low stocks, concerned adults around me began to point out the fires that had begun burning across New South Wales. Fires that seemed to be beyond the scope of human dominance.
Without stopping for a moment of contemplation, I waved off concern and buried my head into the boot of my car to continue the game of road-trip Tetris. However, this New South Wales road-trip was to be marred by a series of events indicative of a swiftly unfolding catastrophe.
The Dorrigo Highway closed as we travelled along it, forcing us back to the coast. Any hope of camping in the Blue Mountains was dashed as large portions of the National Park closed and the fire risk hit catastrophic. Nights in Sydney were memorable for their crimson sunsets through smog-filled dusks. Our trip back up the New South Wales coast had to be rerouted inland as we crawled through low-lying smoke surrounding Newcastle. And, as nature’s final point in its airtight arguments against my ignorance, a quiet mountain lookout in northern New South Wales, one overlooking an expanse of plainland, showed us what may as well have been the aftermath of a nuclear war. The horizon was pockmarked by pillars of smoke, billowing skywards from local spot-fires. Monuments to the ecological devastation to follow.
Progressing chronologically, December 15 saw me aboard a ferry toward Moreton Island. Taking a reprieve from constant Christmas festivities to participate in a clean-up on the island, I encountered the fire crisis for a second time. At this point, scorched earth and withered trees made up a significant amount of the north of the island. Trevor, Director of Tangalooma Eco-Resort, indicated to me how close the blaze had come to the pristine resort (no more than ten kilometres away).
The resort, with its perfectly manicured flora, meticulously clean beach, and neat low-set buildings, clings to the side of Moreton, like a barnacle clings to the hulking hull of a cargo ship. It seems as if a stiff breeze rolling off neighbouring sand hills could blow the whole operation back across the bay. The resort was safe from the inferno by well-planned burn offs immediately surrounding the facilities. A simple example of humans ensuring the safety of their material creation.
Moving forward for a final time, the New Year had now ticked over, and this crisis of furious inferno only increased in its breadth. Fire forced thousands of people in the East Gippsland region of Victoria and in south-east New South Wales to take refuge on beaches, only to be carried offshore by military and Surf Life Saving vessels. Photos taken in the first weeks of 2020 are more reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic works of Hollywood fiction than of the “fun-in-the-sun” Australian Summer that many of us are used to. Several lives had been lost, thousands of properties had been destroyed and millions of hectares of ecologically diverse bushland had been annihilated.
Discussion of preservation and prevention in the aftermath of this disaster seems to be focused on ensuring future fires don’t destroy human settlement. This is a fundamental symptom of an anthropocentric ethical perspective, the belief that only humans are worthy of ethical consideration. However, this ethical standing has played a role in the scale of these fires.
This is the point at which a tremendous natural disaster demonstrates the progression of western ethical consideration. The Western, anthropocentric view of land management can be summarised as management of the land to protect the instrumental value humans have assigned to it. In other words, the land should be managed in a way that protects the value that humans can extract from it.
This is why the Tangalooma resort remained completely unaffected by fires as the rest of the island burnt. An anthropocentric perspective leads humans to defend that which we have deemed as our possession first, that which we can exploit for profit second, and anything else last. And it was this approach to land management that doomed Australia to burn.
These fires highlight an urgent need for the reconsideration of value judgements in the anthropocentric world. Humanity can control nature, but only until a point. The Earth possesses more power than humans could possibly envision. Instead of respecting the ability of the Earth to be bent to our whims, why not choose to respect the inherent power in nature?
As I stood on that mountain, overlooking the New South Wales countryside, I contemplated what this land would look like if we chose to restructure our values. What would have been the results of this fire season if humans made a conscious decision to recognise the intrinsic value of nature? Of biodiversity? Would there have been well-planned hazard reduction burns across the country? What is quite clear is that by reframing our circles of ethical consideration, we can observe and begin our journey on paths of action previously unknown or considered uninteresting.
There are swathes of alternatives to the anthropocentric status quo, too many for me to detail with effect. The works of Arne Næss and Aldo Leopold dictate ecocentric philosophies in which the biodiversity of ecosystems is of intrinsic value, best detailed in their works Ecology of Wisdom and A Sand County Almanac.
Or, if the reader was inclined to expand their perception even wider, I strongly encourage them to investigate the approach of First Nations Australians to our environment. A highly simplified overview of this Indigenous approach — the incredibly limited scope of which I would like to apologise for — would be to see ourselves as part of the Earth, simply another element of the environment.
No matter our understanding of these concepts, or willingness to understand them, we have the ability to reconsider our circles of ethical consideration. As such, my request of the reader is this: reflect on the bushfires, identify the values in that reflection, then use those values to inform future action. This is a philosophical approach to informed activism.
In terms of the bushfires, we must reflect on what was destroyed and acknowledge those things left us upset with their destruction. We must then identify what it was about that destruction that left us sad, angry or otherwise pessimistic, identify the value that was infringed upon and that brought about these emotions. Were we distraught by the news of one billion animals dying because we value those animals in and of themselves, because of their beauty, or because they can be exploited to push forward human progress in some way?
The reader’s answer does not necessarily concern me — at least in the context of this article. What does concern me is the need to act upon our value judgements. Do not be content to be an armchair philosopher in areas; take action which supports and reaffirms your value judgements and ethical principles. My ability to state, “the destruction of biodiverse bushland upset me because I recognise biodiversity as intrinsically valuable” means nothing if I do not act upon it.
I did not set out in November of last year with intention to reflect upon the assignment of value in the western world. Yet, my journey highlighted a point that is not commonly considered in our day-to-day. Reflecting on the world around us, both our interactions with it and the feelings it evokes in us, is key to understanding our individual ethical values. And it is knowledge of these values that allows us to act morally in the world.
