Deadly fires turn Australians into climate change converts, similar to California

LATROBE VALLEY, Australia - The turning point came in 2017, when wind-whipped blazes swept through the foothills, jumped a freeway and burned through thousands of homes and businesses, killing more than 40 people.

The fires in Northern California's wine country - followed by an even more deadly inferno in Paradise the following year - led many Californians to recognize that climate change was not some distant threat but an immediate catalyst of the state's ever-more destructive blazes.

Australia is now going through a similar shift in perspective amid fires that have burned more than 30 million acres.

"No one can recall an event like this," said Nick Clark, a farmer who lost most of his sheep's pasture to a wind-driven fire on Southern Australia's Kangaroo Island in mid-January. "And you can say that about a lot of weather events in Australia. It's hard to say that it's just a cycle; I think you have to concede that it's more than just that."

Australia is a fossil fuel-friendly country, with an economy dependent on tourism and shipping coal to China and other fast-growing Asian