I nearly died fighting climate change-fuelled fires

In the Black Summer fires in February 2020 I was on deployment on the far south coast of NSW with my Queensland rural fire brigade.

A large burning tree came down on our truck.

If this were just me and the crew in an isolated incident, well, sometimes, life is risky.

But millions of Australians have now been hard hit by climate disasters, losing days of work because of extreme heat, storms or fires, choking on smoke for months, lost income from drought-stricken farms, or not being able to afford insurance for homes and businesses.

Hundreds of thousands of us have suffered major losses- the deaths of friends and family, lost houses, lost jobs, farms and businesses.

Hundreds have died during climate disasters. Thousands more have had their health affected - often permanently.

One fundamental requirement of our politicians is that we expect them to do everything they can to keep us safe.

In firefighting there are of course risks. But I expect elected leaders to work bloody hard to not make it riskier for us than it needs to be.

It's maddening and frustrating to me that over the past week Peter Dutton and other federal Liberal and National Party leaders have committed to opposing the current targets and plans to reduce climate pollution, despite the fact we are broadly on track to achieve them.

They have said that nuclear reactors will provide long-term power, but pretty much no one else believes reactors will ever be built because of the cost and the toxic waste problems.

Even if they do somehow arrive it will be 20 plus years away. All that while we'd continue to burn coal and gas, the fossil fuels driving climate change.

This means billions of tonnes more of climate warming pollution. And that means I and other firefighters would have more catastrophic fires to try to deal with.

It's a sad reality that some federal Liberal and National party members of parliament deny the science of climate change - Barnaby Joyce, Andrew Wallace, Matt Canavan, Colin Boyce and Keith Pitt, among others, are all on the record denying the evidence.

A strong leader would stare down the climate change deniers in the Coalition ranks. They would point to the need for the parties to deal with climate now and work to protect our lives, home and jobs.

This last week there's been a mass of jargon and numbers in the media on climate policies - the Paris accord, 1.5 degrees alignment, 43 per cent by the 2030 target, and so on.

We do need detailed policies and targets and to get those right. But mostly missing from the discussions is the cost to us of doing nothing now. That if we don't reduce climate pollution we'll get more extreme weather.

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As a firefighter I think it's a gutless approach to leadership by Peter Dutton to kick action on climate into the long grass of some distant future.

It's a failure to step up and be genuinely strong. It's a failure to accept the realities we now face with increasing climate disasters.

Like thousands of other emergency workers I'm more than happy to go do the work when needed. But please, Peter Dutton, pull your weight and help keep us safe.