The summer of 1858 was unusually hot in London. The River Thames was six-foot-deep in a sludge of untreated human waste and industrial pollution, a breeding ground for cholera, diphtheria, and typhoid. But that summer the smell was so bad it invaded the Houses of Parliament. Committee rooms and cabinet meetings were abandoned. The government contemplated moving to Oxford. In a vain attempt to mask the stench, the curtains were soaked in a solution of concentrated bleach. But Parliament was forced to act. By August, new legislation had been passed that set the scene for a radical new sewage treatment plan for all of London. It saved many thousands of lives.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Dramatic improvements in life expectancy during the second half of the 19th century reflected a genuine public health revolution. The Great Stink was a turning point in that history. Politicians could no longer ignore the evidence of their senses. It finally dawned on them that public health did not just affect the poor: it affected everybody.
We are in the middle of another Great Stink. For millions of Australians all up and down the eastern seaboard (and elsewhere), you only have to open a window to know the reality of climate change. A smoke haze is blanketing the country - a firefront 6000 kilometres long, millions of hectares of land blackened, rainforests up in smoke, lives lost, hundreds of houses destroyed. Hazardous air quality. Asthma attacks. Respiratory complications affecting children, old people, the sick and the vulnerable, in our cities and towns. And summer has only just begun.
You don't need me to tell you any of this. You only have to step outside and breathe in. Go on. Do it now. Tell me what you see - or don't see - through the haze.
Last week, while the country went up in flames, the Australian Parliament was sitting. They could see and smell the evidence from the windows and front steps of Parliament House itself. But the government has done nothing. In response to a few rather desultory questions it assured the Australian public that there is no crisis, that everything is under control, and that bushfires are just a normal part of Australian life. Members of the Australian government can still be seen wandering the corridors of Parliament - not to mention their houses and electorate offices - with a handkerchief covering their nose, and their heads buried in the sand.
Australian scientists have been predicting exactly this for years now - a hotter, drier continent, extreme weather conditions, more numerous and severe bushfires, and a much longer season. Now their predictions have come to pass - but apparently we are supposed to think this is just a lucky guess. Bushfires are just a natural disaster meaning, of course, a tragedy meaning, of course, no one's fault. The Liberal and National parties would rather we just put up with the stench, and destruction, and the deaths, than do anything about it. But isn't it time to wake up and smell the ashes?
There is a small sculpture on Scott Morrison's desk. It is a figure of a boat, and it says: "I stopped these". For a long time, Australia's opposition parties have lagged behind in the highly competitive category of three-word slogans. Well, I have one. Stop the Fires.
What would it take to stop the fires? It would mean resourcing our emergency services properly, at both the state and federal levels, and facing up to the new challenges posed by the now overlapping fire seasons in both the northern and southern hemispheres. It would mean addressing our global responsibility to move towards dramatic reductions in carbon emissions, rather than relying on denial, misrepresentation, and accounting tricks. It would mean embracing the huge opportunities that a low-carbon economy offers Australia. It would mean weaning our Prime Minister off his fossil fuel fetish.
READ MORE:
Stopping the fires means trying to save the Murray-Darling rather than turning a blind eye to its destruction by a handful of big agribusinesses. It means providing dramatic long-term assistance to help transition to forms of agriculture sustainable in a drying, warming climate. Australia spends up to $2 billion per year for the vindictive pleasure of making sure that a few refugees are kept in conditions of obscene cruelty. I suspect our struggling farmers would welcome that sort of money. Instead, what is the government's policy? Encouraging them to take out more loans in the vain hope that happy days will soon be here again. Just what this country needs. More debt.
The Great Stink of 1858 was a moment when something shifted. British members of parliament could no longer ignore the evidence of their nostrils. In the Great Stink of 2019, we need our Parliament to shift too. We need our politicians to face up to the evidence of their nostrils. Climate change affects everybody. It is an emergency taking place - literally right under our noses.
It's time to stop the fires. Will we look back and see this year as a turning point, a moment when reality finally trumped self-interest? Or will our politicians continue to show how much less courage they have than those of 1858? If so, there's another lesson we can learn from the Great Stink. Buy shares in bleach. After all, someone always profits from disaster.
#stopthefires #greatstink
- Professor Desmond Manderson is the director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities at the Australian National University.
