Australian Firefighters Climate Alliance – a voice for the grassroots

Bushfires are becoming more frequent and the bushfire season is coming earlier and lasting longer because of climate change.

These longer fire seasons in Australia are not “normal”. They are being driven by human induced global heating (climate change). Unless we act now to reduce our emissions in line with what climate science suggests, we will become locked in to ever worsening fire seasons.

The people on the frontlines of climate change include firefighters. You have probably heard of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), which is a ‘coalition of former senior Australian fire and emergency service leaders representing every fire service in Australia, a number of SES and land management agencies, communicating the seriousness of the climate change threat, calling for government action on emissions’. They represent leaders within the emergency services who are concerned about climate change.

There are many thousands of grassroots firefighters who also have opinions about climate change and fire. The Australian Firefighters Climate Alliance (AFCA) has been created to provide a platform for rank and file firefighters to express their opinions and build political pressure for the government to act on climate change.

The ACFA is a network of grassroots volunteer and career firefighters ‘wanting to see our governments take stronger action on climate change. We are not connected to any political party’.

This statement, from a volunteer firefighter in Gippsland sums up the thinking of AFCA: “I grew up in regional Victoria and I am now a firefighter here. I have witnessed bushfires getting more intense and more destructive whilst the Australian Government has failed to adequately act on reducing the emissions driving this trend. This failure to act is putting regional communities and firefighters at greater and greater risk from catastrophic bushfires. https://australianfirefightersclimatealliance.org/ home/2022-summer-campaign/ AFCA facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/ausfca

Some of the current and founding members include Jim Casey (Fire and Rescue, NSW), Darin Sullivan (Fire and Rescue NSW) and Vivien Thomson (Rural Fire Service volunteer, NSW). AFCA says that Australia should aim to reduce emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2035, and make this announcement well before COP27.

As one small part in building demands for Australia to act, AFCA has launched an effort to encourage firefighters to raise their voice on the need to reduce emissions.

Full details on the campaign can be found here.