With parts of the east coast already in flames and forecasts predicting hotter and drier than average conditions in the months ahead, Australia is facing the greatest bushfire risk since the catastrophic summer of 2019-2020.

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When I woke up in the middle of the night in Sydney on Friday, the smell of the bushfire smoke in the city triggered memories of those dreadful months when vast areas of Australia burned. Already this summer, we are reading the grim stories of people losing their lives and homes burning, and we experience the rising of a common dread. Not this, again.

Blazes burned so fast and hot that emergency services were overwhelmed. Survivors were left in inadequate housing for months if not years. Vast areas of nature were devastated. Millions of Australians breathed in the toxic smoke that blanketed our cities for weeks. According to the Australia Institute, almost 80 per cent of Australians were impacted by the 2019-2020 bushfires.

Back in 2019, Scott Morrison became a lightning rod for justified fury. Exhausted firefighters rejected the PM's handshake and fire-impacted community members told him that he wasn't welcome in their towns. And in smoke-filled cities, thousands filled the streets at rallies, demanding that Morrison take action on climate change.

Those disasters should have catalysed a national reckoning that included the drawing of a clear line drawn - that there could be no more expansion of the fossil fuel industries that are the greatest driver of climate change, which is supercharging worsening bushfire conditions. When Morrison was voted out a few years later, he experienced record unpopularity and a lack of action on climate change was one of the key reasons for his defeat.

Since that time, we've changed governments, but fossil fuel companies continue to plan for........

© Canberra Times