A hot, dry country caught between fire and a coal face

"Mom, mom, look at the moon," a small boy, tugging at his mother's skirt, exclaimed at Beijing's Lama Temple one murky fall afternoon in the early 2000s.

The dull red orb he was pointing out was actually the sun.

While the air pollution situation in the Chinese capital has improved markedly in recent years, smog levels are still occasionally rated hazardous.

That's something Australians have been getting a taste of in recent months, with smoke from bushfires blanketing Sydney－where it has obscured expensive harbor views－and other cities, including Canberra, the national capital. Beijing residents have even been asked for advice on the best masks to wear.

Bushfires are part of Australia's ecosystem but the current bushfire season has been exceptionally destructive, with record high temperatures following a record dry spell.

In its submission to a 2009 Senate inquiry into bushfires in Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization said an average of 500,000 square kilometers of the country goes up in flames each year, with about 80 percent of that in sparsely populated northern savanna regions.

Since the mid-1800s, notable fires have included Black Sunday in 1926, Black Monday in 1863, Black Tuesday in 1967, Black Thursday in 1851, Black Friday in 1939 and Black Saturday in 2009. Throw in Ash Wednesday in 1983 and you've got the week covered.

There's now been a Black November and December, with more land burned in the state of New South Wales than there is in the whole country of Wales, and January and February are likely to be added to the list.

Last month, in its Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook, the country's Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Center said the southern half of the continent experienced its driest January to November period ever last year, in records dating back to 1900, while daytime temperatures nationwide were the warmest since records began in 1910.

"The tendency for fire seasons to become more intense and fire danger to occur earlier in the season is a clear trend in Australia's climate," it warned.

The only solace offered was that hot, dry conditions were likely to curb the growth of vegetation, meaning there could be less to burn when future fires do break out.

Australia is also the world's biggest exporter of metallurgical coal, used to make steel, and its secondbiggest exporter of thermal coal, which is burned to generate electricity, with China its second-biggest market for both.

When that exported coal is burned it will contribute to global warming, and that leaves a hot, dry country caught between a fire and a coal face.

Australia's fossil fuel exports contribute 3.6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions each year－with coal exports responsible for 2.9 percent in 2017－according to a report released in July by Climate Analytics, a think tank based in Berlin. Add that to the 1.4 percent of global emissions from the country's domestic use of fossil fuel and you have a country with a population of 25.5 million－less than Beijing's when migrants from other parts of China are included－that is responsible for about 5 percent of global emissions.

Figures in last month's edition of the Australian government's Resources and Energy Quarterly suggest Australia's coal exports will rise by 5.6 percent in the next two years to 415 million metric tons.

Climate Analytics says that on a per capita basis, Australia's carbon footprint already exceeds China's by a factor of nine, the United States' by a factor of four and India's by a factor of 37.

It goes on to say "if current government and industry projections for fossil fuel exports are realized", Australia could be responsible for about 13 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2030, with the largest growth coming from coal exports.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently conceded that climate change is making the country's bushfire situation worse but warned that reining in coal mining would be "reckless" and destroy jobs.

But as Australia burns and another big coal exporter, Indonesia, tries to keep its capital from flooding, a lack of regard for the consequences of global warming is coming home to roost.

Contact the writer at mike@chinadaily.com.cn