“The companies you work with are Apple, Amazon, Disney – if ISIS started a streaming service you would call your agent directly, wouldn’t you?”
He then called on the award winners to forego political appeals in their acceptance speeches. “If you win, come up here, take your little trophy, thank your agent and God, and then fuck off,” he said. “You are in no position to teach the public about anything. You don’t know anything about the real world,” he told the visibly shocked Hollywood greats. “Most of you spent less time at school than Greta Thunberg.”
In the end, however, not everyone let political statements stop them. Russell Crowe, who was not personally present, had actress Jennifer Aniston read out a statement in which he blamed climate change for the bush fires in his Australian homeland.
“We have to act on the basis of science, switch our global production to renewable energy and treat the planet as the unique and wonderful place it is,” wrote the main character of Gladiator. Australian actress Cate Blanchett warned of a “climate disaster” that we are all exposed to.
Australians are currently facing bushfires five times the size of last year’s California blazes in the US – 500 000 Hectares, across the Northeast of Victoria and into New South Wales.
Helicopter operations are hampered by a smoke cloud that stretches all the way to New Zealand. No doubt more will follow because these fires struck at the height of the summer holiday season.
The fear of the fire command is that these dozens of out of control fires are going to join together and create a firestorm of a size not seen before by humans. The scientists have stated that their models cannot predict what is going to happen, these big fires create their own weather.
Efforts are currently focused on lives and critical infrastructure.
The cause of these fires is the Australian drought and the highly inflammable nature of the Eucalyptus tree – coupled with the forest management fantasies of inner city liberals and Greens who refuse anything resembling fire reduction burning.
They refuse simple logic: Eucalyptus forests shed fuel all the time. One can have small “cool” fires every five years to clean up the fuel or a big fire every few decades, but eventually there will be a fire.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison meanwhile defended his decision not to meet with former fire chiefs after a former top firefighter revealed that he and 22 emergency services chiefs were shunned by Morrison when they issued a chilling warning about impending bushfires in April last year.
They said they demanded a meeting with the PM, but he refused twice.
