As fires obliterated large swathes of Australia this week, I was largely oblivious to the news — though tenuously connected to events as I travelled through oven-hot, tinder-dry national parks in Southern Africa. Largely without internet connection, it was only when I reached the airport in Johannesburg en route home that the extent of the catastrophe became apparent to me.
Apart from the stories about the devastating loss of life and property and the shameful barbs fired by politicians, there were some things that struck closer to home: a message from my sister saying the school at which she is assistant principal had been closed due to fire danger; a note from my son saying there'd been reports of fires one street down from our own in a part of Sydney which borders a national park; and news from my daughter that the suburb separated from her own by a narrow swatch of bushland had been bombed with fire retardant.
It brought back memories of our arrival in Australia as immigrants on New Year's Day 2002. There was no picturesque vista of the city to be spied from the plane windows as we descended into Sydney; instead, the landscape was engulfed in a pall of smoke. Parts of the city were burning; indeed, residents of the very suburb bombed with retardant this week were being evacuated from their homes just as we were breathing in our new home's acrid, furnace-hot air.
It seems a lifetime ago now, long before Kevin Rudd tabled the world's first carbon tax, long before Tony Abbot and the LNP scrapped it; and a lifetime before we would find ourselves led by a government happy to fiddle the books, as it were, so as to further enrich the wealthy even as Australia burned.
This news resonated, too, with the thoughts I'd had just that morning as I travelled from Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi to the country's capital city, Lilongwe, where I would begin the long journey home. The road from the Shire River — where a driver had picked me up — leads through villages fanning out from the main settlement of Liwonde. Tiny mud-brick houses and their outhouses are marooned in oceans of red soil tilled into gentle waves; the villagers are planting wheat before the rains (hopefully) come. Thatch-roofed mud structures house the chickens and goats at night so that wild animals can't eat them. Crackling sedge struggles upon the lifeless dirt. The poverty here is overwhelming.
Yet passing through this landscape I was struck by the profound lessons such deprivation can teach those of us living in developed nations. This is a primitive lifestyle from which we managed to cleverly liberate ourselves following the industrial revolution. Yet as current events illustrate, we haven't been clever enough to recognise that the revolution has gone too far; those very conveniences which define us as progressive — coal-fired power, fuel-guzzling cars, emission-spewing factories, throwaway plastic — are degrading the planet to the point where it will no longer be able to sustain us.
Moreover, the modern conveniences we take for granted, and which have accelerated climate change which in turn has accelerated the ferocity of our bushfires, are not common to most of the world's populace.
"They model — though reluctantly, and through sheer necessity — precisely the conscientious, low-emission lifestyle so many of us are trying to adopt in an effort to reduce our own carbon footprints."
Though climate dissenters will frequently claim Australia's emissions are minuscule compared to those of populous countries like China, India and swaths of Africa, they forget that many (sometimes most) of these countries' residents don't live in air-conditioned houses, frequent air-conditioned shopping centres, eat meat every day, store their food in refrigerators, buy new clothes every season, drive their own vehicles and fly around the world on holidays (disclaimer: as someone who travels and writes about travel for a living, I acknowledge my role in this).
Like the people I encountered in the village of Liwonde — and all the road to Lilongwe, four hours' drive away — they grow much of their own food, draw their precious water from wells rather than gushing taps, and walk, ride bicycles or take public transport to wherever it is they need to go. Instead of irrigating their parched vegetable patches with drinking water, they wait for the rains to come. They buy their charcoal in recycled maize bags.
They allow their chickens and (for the most part) their goats to range free, pecking and nibbling on whatever grass and insects they can find. They wear used clothing, eat meat sparingly and wouldn't dream of wasting food: women carefully count Kwachas and exchange them for overripe bananas at the market we pass by; two young boys who approach me in the town of Salima accept the packed lunch I don't need — cheese and ham bread rolls, a fruit juice box — with expressions of gratitude that are impossible to measure.
In short, these people model — though reluctantly, and through sheer necessity — precisely the conscientious, low-emission lifestyle so many of us are trying to adopt in an effort to reduce our own carbon footprints.
Grinding poverty shouldn't be romanticised, of course, and few would be prepared to trade modern comforts for what is often a hand-to-mouth existence. But such perspectives are instructive for those of us who have too much and are still gluttonous for more: though the world's poorest people have most to lose when climate change strikes — islands inundated with salt water, villages beset by famine, communities in vulnerable areas ill-equipped to protect themselves — they are well versed in the trials we can all expect to stem from it.
Hardship often leads to ingenuity and resilience, while plenitude can render us indulgent and entitled. Such weakness has blinded us to the catastrophe we've inadvertently engineered, so that we would rather destroy the planet than live without the very comforts that are rendering it unlivable. But like those people in Liwonde, we might one day be forced to do exactly that.
Catherine Marshall is a Sydney-based journalist and travel writer.
Main image: Cyclists in Liwonde (Photo by Catherine Marshall)