Australian bush fires

Australia is a continent--it's huge. All of Europe would fit within its borders with room to spare, and it's about the size of the U.S. without Alaska. So it's hard to generalize what's happening, since parts of that country are flooding, others having fires. Our hearts go out to all who've lost family and property in the terrible fires. Americans and Australians share Ireland as, if not our mother, at least a motherly aunt. Possibly 300 have lost their lives and 7,000 have been displaced. But we all know global warming will be blamed for either extreme--fires or flood--because, well, there's never been temperature extremes before right? It's only humans that are the problem. The little greens will blame people for wanting to live away from the city in areas with lots of trees (only movie stars and politicians should be allowed to do this) and the big greens will blame lack of action in capitalist countries to shut down production and let their people all return to 19th century levels of poverty.

I'm guessing that the most fire prone areas of Australia have regulations like ours in the SW U.S., with the best intentions, but aggrevating the fire and loss of life problems. When we were in Arizona and southern California in 2006 our guides were able to show us huge stretches of ugly tender-box forests, where neither the state or private owners were allowed to remove diseased, dead and trash vegetation. Some of the regulations are not even well-intentioned. They are intended to keep people from living there because it would be too dangerous and the "greenies" don't want the habitat desturbed.