CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With a premature Spring heatwave already making it’s mark in late September, Australia’s working class are set to experience the potentially fatal repercussions caused by a combination of political inaction on both housing policy and climate change this summer.
This follows yesterday’s announcement from The Bureau of Meteorology, who have formally declared an El Niño weather event, meaning one is underway for the first time in eight years.
The major climate event impacts the weather patterns of 60 per cent of the globe, with Australia particularly vulnerable to its impacts.
The record-breaking Summer will come after three back-to-back La Nina weather events, plunging Australia into a rapid slingshot of heat that has followed the three years of unsustainable rainfall and chilly Decembers, which in turn had followed the catastrophic black summer bushfires of 2019.
However, this one is gonna be hotter.
And the BOM says it’s gonna be the hottest in those poorly designed housing estates that have been rushed through by governments beholden to the wishes and donations from property developers who have not read or considered even one report provided to them by weather experts who have been warning that this kind of urban sprawl will literally kill people.
Aside from having absolutely zero access to schools, hospitals or public transport – Australia’s medium-density homeland suburbs are made up of cheap black roofs, tiny yards with limited space for vegetation, concrete and bitumen everywhere and a lack of mature trees on nature strips.
New housing development in urban sprawl suburbs like Marsden Park, about 50km northwest of the Sydney CBD, are among the suburbs creating urban heat islands that will exceed well past 50C this summer.
Urban heat islands occur when urban spaces on the city’s outskirts become much hotter than surrounding, less urbanised areas, or even the medium-rise apartment dwellings closer to the ocean.
Penrith in Western Sydney was the hottest place on Earth three years ago, when it hit 48.9C on January 4, 2020 – and that’s a suburb that has a breeze running through it and a few trees.
The BOM says the property developers that have complete control over government policy are about to learn why they should have fucking listened to them, as are the fossil fuel lobbyists who have fought tooth and nail to continue the accelerated burning of fossil fuels into our atmosphere for 200 years.
