Burning Parent Guide

When we remember 2020, most of us will probably recall the emergence of the novel coronavirus. What we might forget is a disaster that dominated the news before covid-19 turned our world upside down: Australia’s record breaking bushfires that engulfed the southern continent in flames.

That the summer of 2019/2020 would be a bad fire season came as no surprise to firefighters. The two previous years had set records for both heat and drought with plants across the country dying from environmental stress. An early start to the fire season and fast burning conflagrations let emergency responders know they were right to worry. When requests to the Prime Minister for help went unanswered, they buckled down to fight the fires as best they could.

What the firefighters also did not know was that no human skill could possibly defeat fires on the scale they were about to experience. By the end of the fire season, 59 million acres would burn, including 21% of Australian forests. Three billion animals would die and thousands of Australians would be evacuated or permanently uprooted as their homes incinerated. Over the months when fire raged uncontrolled over millions of acres, people would watch as day turned to night under the volume of soot, as massive fires created their own weather systems, including rain-less thunderstorms, and as smoke turned their skies red. They would confront questions about long term environmental damage and the price smoke took on the health of their residents, particularly pregnant women and the very young.

As Burning points out, the tragedy of Australia’s Black Summer is that it could have been prevented or mitigated. Australians have known for decades that their home, located at the confluence of three oceans and with a continental climate, is unusually vulnerable to climate change. Throughout this documentary, interviews with scientists, firefighters, journalists, and young activists make clear that a catastrophe of this magnitude was not inevitable.

Documentaries can often feel dry but Burning is emotionally draining to watch. There’s the frustration of watching politicians ignore warnings and deliberately undercut scientific research. There’s the pity for people who lose their homes. And there’s the horror of seeing the terrible cost to Australia’s wildlife. Scenes of koalas trying to escape from the fires are succeeded by clips of koalas crying in pain from their burns, a heart-rending sound that’s impossible to forget. It’s also wrenching to see charred kangaroo corpses lying on the roads in the aftermath of the flames. Aside from these harrowing scenes, there is little other negative content, save a handful of profanities. This is definitely suitable for teen viewing at home or in the classroom.

Burning is not a comfortable documentary but it successfully uses Australia’s terrible experience to raise questions of all viewers. How does climate change affect us? To what extent to we contribute to it? What can we do to mitigate it and what policies should we encourage politicians to support? There are no easy answers, but this is the burning issue of our time and this film does an excellent job of giving it a raw immediacy that will not allow audiences to forget.