Sometimes, in the eye of a storm, it can be hard to tell when the winds have shifted. Victories often don’t occur in a clear-cut timeline, nor can they always be pinpointed to a specific event. Darkest before the dawn, as they say. When we look back at this time, maybe — just maybe — the spring and summer of 2023 will be remembered as a pivot period.
The Australian Government’s public analysis of climate risk, our greatest threat, is dangerously misleading. The Intergenerational Report 2023 (IGR) is a prime example. By dumbing down the implications of climate change with simplified economic models, the IGR and similar reports are institutionalising the global failure to face climate reality.
"The report invokes the economy, markets (for energy, finance and capital), the private sector, private finance, business (once – and as a civil society actor) and a range of human activities. Yet it is the institution of private property and the dynamic of capital that produce and destroy its material and energetic environment (Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene, 2023)."
Over 1,000 wildfires are burning across Canada. Families are fleeing their homes, haunted by the very real possibility that they may never be able to return.
Over the past five years, I have closely followed the signals of climate change, deciphering their significance through the frequency of temperature records and the escalating intensity of wildfires.
At the beginning of July, I mapped out record temperatures that resulted in devastating wildfires in B.C., Alberta and Nova Scotia. It showed record heat that intensified in May and June.
Canada's current wildfire season is devastating evidence of the effects of climate change, scientists say, but for some conspiracy theorists, the thousands of square kilometres of burnt ground isn't enough to convince them.
