Reddit reviews Dark Emu

There weren't wildfires before the British came. The aborigines managed the land differently. If you want to read about some of the things they did you could try Bruce Pascoe - Dark Emu or Bill Gammadge - The Biggest Estate on Earth.

Your friend is just wrong in so many ways. For a start: back burns are a live fire fighting technique, he means hazard reduction burns. It really depends on the type of forest. But any forest given the conditions can dry out and all that "blanket of dead trees" will be fuel, and the more fuel, the hotter and wilder the fire will be.

In general, the more trees there are, the more rain. We have been clearing trees at a huge rate and this has resulted in hotter and drier conditions.

that's a super inaccurate view of history - check out this book (sorry for the amazon link) if you'd actually like to learn a more contemporary and accurate account of how aboriginal people lived

more lesuire time than us, better diets, and less negative pathologies. i think your problem is that you're viewing things thru a western lens of what 'progresss' means - sure, we have buildings and weapons and tech, but we're also destroying our environment and creating inequitable societies, it's not always black and white