As some of you will know, I live near Adelaide in South Australia.  You may also know that we have a serious bush fire burning quite close to this city now, the date today is Monday 5th January 2015 and the fire has been burning since last Friday.

It will be several days yet before the CFS (Country Fire Service)  can get it put out .

These people are almost all volunteers and the service will take any reasonably able-bodied person and train them to do the job.

They risk their lives to protect people and property who often don't take sufficient precautions to protect themselves but insist on living in high fire risk areas.

These statements are, I know, controversial but I am not picking on those farmers and others who do do the right thing but I am aiming this directly at those who do not.

However, there is a far bigger issue here than the residents in those risky areas.

I saw the leader of the Greens political party make a big statement about how this fire is a warning about Climate Change.

This is a load of crap.  Fires like this are a direct result of the environmentalists preventing the authorities doing burn-offs in the forests and national parks.

They claim that burning off destroys the environment.  This is not correct.  Cool burns, as experienced in a controlled burn-off reduce the understory fuel load and protects the environment.  They usually recover inside 12 months.  Trees and forests are not killed by a cool burn they are rejuvenated.  There are many plants in Australia which need their seeds to experience a burn to germinate.

Very few of the local fauna have any issues with a cool burn as it doesn't travel fast and they have little trouble in escaping the fire.  Generally only relatively small areas are burnt in any single burn-off so only small areas need to regrow and the local fauna have areas to survive in until recovery happens.

Hot burns like the one being experienced at the moment in the Adelaide Hills destroy massive areas of environment which will take years to recover.  The local fauna have little chance to escape as the fire moves so fast and they have no islands to survive in after the fire has passed.

Big bush fires are far more destructive than any series of cool burns will ever be and they cannot get a good hold on the bush if the burn-offs have been done regularly.

So, bush fires like this are a warning about not doing burn-offs due to misguided environmentalists who are the core constituents of the Green party.

Another annoyance to me is that it seems that the bulk of the environmentalist movement don't actually care about the environment at all, they just want to bleat about others not caring.

In Australia any environmentalist who is not a member of the CFS is just not serious.  The biggest threat to the Australian environment is fire, it has been for centuries, so if you are genuinely serious about protecting the environment you must be a member of the CFS or, at the very least, provide support services for those courageous volunteers.

Any of you who are CFS volunteers and also environmentalists should now comment to tell me that I'm wrong.  I'm not expecting many comments.