The new Australian cabinet is a breath of fresh air compared to the previous venal, incompetent lot, but that in itself presents me with a gnawing sense of guilt. Chris Bowen is spruiking a new climate change bill (how wonderful to even have such a thing), but its “target” reductions by 2030 are far too low to line up with +1.5ºC. What’s more, not only is it not a proactive real…
I’m meant to be on a plane to Darwin today and one of the anticipated pleasures of that flight was being in the air on this big day. Too much emotional strain. But Covid means I’m here in Melbourne. I keep fantasizing the crushing ouster of the climate-wrecking Liberal Party but such thoughts are dangerous. Even the experts have trouble calling modern Australian elections and…
I’m attempting to ignore the Australian election, climaxing this Saturday, at the same time as keeping track of every damned wrinkle in it. It’s driving me crazy. In a sane world, I would be voting on the basis of each party’s/candidates policies across a wide rang of important issues, but in this world of climate crisis, just thinking of my grandchildren reminds me that right…
David Wallace-Wells, one of the finest writers to engage with the climate emergency, pens a self-explanatory (but definitely worth reading, though it may be behind a paywall) long article titled “Why 2021 could be California’s worst fire season ever.” A Washington Post article (syndicated outside the Post’s paywall as a Sydney Morning Herald article, “The earth is…
Dreaming up the second half of my sixties, I yearned to throw my hat into the ring of climate action. I got arrested eighteen months ago on the streets during what was probably Extinction Rebellion’s most effective week yet in Melbourne. But now all I’m doing is reading climate action words from a billionaire, admittedly a very readable and usefully analytical book. What happened…
It seems impossible to impose order on life right now and order is necessary to focus on the work. No doubt this is partly due to emerging from lockdown. Suddenly the respite from life’s everyday imposts vanishes. But this is not just a post-pandemic issue (needless to say, the pandemic is still here, it’s just that in Melbourne we’re protected from it, as least for now). Something more…
I can’t draw but scribbled the image below (clouds, lightning, rain) during a Zoom last night. I’d imposed a self blackout but had somehow convinced myself Trump would be out on his ears, swamped by a blue wave. But the results looked like 2016’s. Leaden dread bore on me. Today, on a Thursday in Melbourne, hope is a babe waiting to be delivered.
I read quite a lot of sci-fi and a staple of that is the tale of a dystopia. Climate-change-related dystopian novels have rained down on us over the last few years, but here’s a twist, courtesy of this Grist article, “With the world on fire, climate fiction no longer looks like fantasy.” As an academic quoted in the article puts it, quite aptly it seems to me, “in the near…