Arson or global warming? Australia's brushfires turn political

There are big brushfires in Australia. People have died. That happens with fires, and it used to happen a lot more in history. But 50, 100 years ago, we didn't have live and international 24-hour news ready to fill in the information gap about the root cause of the flames.

Deaths from climate events were half a million people a year just a century ago; now they’re one tenth that, and mainly in the third world. Many of those deaths can be prevented by technology and industry. Try fighting brushfires before the age of the automobile, before pumper trucks, and pipelines, let alone water bombers.

Australia had a carbon tax, then repealed it. Is that what caused the fires? Or was it the lack of a controlled burn policy, the lack of fire walls, the lack of dams?

Or are the fires being set deliberately?

Well, Australia’s Spectator magazine meticulously went through the news reports, town by town, and added up all the cases of arson. And there are 200 of them. 

NEXT: True North's Andrew Lawton on the upcoming Conservative Party leadership race set for June of this year.

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