I’ll start by saying that in terms of the devastation
wrought by these bushfires, I’m a very lucky man. I have my home. I have my
family. Yet as days become weeks and weeks become months, I can’t help but
notice how the fires are beginning to shape so many aspects of life that before
now I’d paid no attention at all.
Canberra is my home and always has been. For all the grief
that people lay upon the city (some of which is certainly justified), I’ve
always loved it dearly. Canberra’s lack of density and spread out population
leads to one of its more popular criticisms that the city somewhat soulless. It
is less vibrant than larger cities with a thrumming metropolis. Fewer cafes and
restaurants. Not as many night spots.
And yet, to me, this is Canberra’s strength. The lack of
density is compensated by an abundance of nature. From the vantage point of
Canberra’s more urban peaks (Mt Ainslie or Black Mountain, take your pick), the
built environment forms small patches among the greenery. You aren’t living in
a city that has crushed the nature upon which it was found. You are living in nature
that happens to also house a city.
Until the bushfires began, there would’ve been few cities
across the globe with population of 400,000+ and air as clean or skies as clear
as Canberra. Yet the endless vista is now masked by the unending haze. Most
mornings you smell it before you see it. The clear skies and clean air are
becoming more a memory than a feature.
But more than the just being a blight on the landscape, the smoke
is seeping into every aspect of our lives. Weather is the easiest go to for small
talk in an office setting. It’s the thing you talk about when there’s nothing
to talk about. The smoke is all we ever talk about now. It’s the first thing
mentioned each morning (“bit smoky on the drive in today”) and the last thing
mentioned each evening (“oof. Looks a bit smoky out there”). The only easier
office small talk is turning to a colleague after lunch on Friday and asking “doing
anything interesting this weekend?” But even that rhetorical refuge is tainted.
Responses are more often framed by what people won’t be doing because of the
smoke.
The best hour of my week during summer is spent playing in a
social soccer competition on Sunday mornings. My team isn’t very good
(currently sitting second last out of 16 teams), but that doesn’t matter. It is
fun and it is freeing and I get to catch up with dear friends that I don’t see
as often as I should. My job is relatively demanding (particularly at this time
of year), so it’s one of the few opportunities I get to just not worry about
anything. Three of the last five rounds have been cancelled due to air quality.
The slapdash very 90s looking website that houses the competition’s draw and
ladder now has a button that turns green an hour before your game to let you
know if it’s safe to play.
There must a silver
lining though, right? There must be something we’ve gained from all of this? I
suppose there has. I know more about particulates than I ever thought I would. I
know that there are air quality stations in Florey, Civic and Monash and am
constantly aware of their readings. My mental arithmetic has improved from
having to quickly calculate in my head just how many times the air quality
rating is above the level government health agencies deem hazardous.
I’ve learned more about the people around me too. More about
my running mad friends who can’t remember the last time they went for a run and
how that makes them feel. More about the relentless anxiety of my friends with
kids who worry about the long-term impacts on their health. More about myself
when on those scarce smoke free moments I look upwards at night and remember
just how crisp and clear the Canberra night sky can be.
I’ve learned just how much I care for my nephew. He’s three
years old, he calls me “Uncle Day” and his face lights up whenever he sees me.
I think a lot about how the stunning green landscapes and peerless bright stars
that have been a feature of the first 30 years of my life may cease to be an aspect
of his. That the childhood of playing and watching sports that I enjoyed may be
something I won’t be able to instill in him because it simply isn’t an option.
These bushfires have changed the lives of millions of people
to various degrees. And there is no end in sight. I don’t know what can be done
about it. I’m not smart enough to divine the solution. I’m not qualified to
understand it. But I do have some hope.
I have hope that the next generation will battle against a
concept that scientists refer to as Shifting Baselines Syndrome. It means that
each generation will accept the depleted version of the world they are born
into. The new normal, right? It’s a term we’ve heard a million times this
summer. My hope, and I do feel it truly, is that the kids will look at what is
paralysing us and say that enough is enough. That a world that doesn’t look
like the photos your parents took isn’t good enough. That a world in which your
eyes sting and your lungs burn isn’t a world worth living in.
Even if we do
nothing, it will be a long, long time before the climate actually destroys us.
But life isn’t life if it isn’t worth living. I hope the kids reject that and
their rejection is so overwhelming and so inspiring that myself and the people
I know are rocked out of our time filling conversations about the weather in
the office and we all resolve to do something about it.
