11 January 2025
ACF warns of more climate catastrophes as LA wildfires burn and 2024 declared hottest year on record
With 2024 now officially declared the hottest year on record, and wildfires continuing to rage in California, the Australian Conservation Foundation says urgent action is needed to phase out fossil fuels globally.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed on Friday, previous projections that 2024 was the warmest on record globally and the first year the average temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“This is what 1.5°C of global warming looks like,” Annika Reynolds (they/them), ACF’s national climate policy advisor said.
“Australia’s Black Summer, the severe wildfires in 2021 and 2022 across Europe, and now LA’s horrific fires in the middle of winter. Climate change is driving a cascading series of unnatural disasters all around the globe.”
“Australia is fuelling this crisis with its reckless fossil fuel exports and approvals. In 2024, Climate Analytics found that Australia was the second largest exporter of climate pollution in the world.”
“These complex, compounding and devastating climate disasters will only become more frequent and severe across the world unless we phase out the burning and export of fossil fuels.
“LA’s fires have started during an abnormally dry winter, just as our own Black Summer fires did five years ago, in what went on to become Australia's most catastrophic fire season. The similarity between smoke-enveloped downtown LA right now, and east coast cities across Australia five years ago, is an alarming reminder for those that lived through the Black Summer.”
“This is all a terrifying glimpse of what could be the new normal if warming continues and 1.5°C becomes new annual average temperature. But it is not yet too late, and the climate science is clear that there are narrow but remaining pathways to stay below the 1.5°C warming ceiling. We must cut emissions further and faster this decade, to avert spiralling climate change.”
“The Albanese Government is getting on with the job of phasing out fossil fuel burning in Australia, by rolling out cleaner, cheaper renewables. But until Albanese stops approving new coal and gas export projects, the legacy of this government – like all Australian governments to date – will be as contributors to the climate crisis.”
On Friday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese drew a link between LA’s most devastating fires on record and climate change but ACF says the PM’s words are not enough, and that now is the time for strong climate action that matches the scale of this crisis.
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Media contact: Liv Casben 0415 214 365
