This much we know: the war has entered a new and terrifying stage. Since April, a full-scale offensive has been underway in Canada, where the enemy has visited devastation on some 15 million hectares of territory, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, including entire regions by air. So fierce, so utterly one-sided is the assault that its toxic consequences have for months painted the skies of the United States’ east coast apocalyptic orange, and even inked their way into the faraway horizons of Spain and Portugal.
Further south, schools from Minnesota to Missouri to Mississippi have closed over the past week as yet another blistering, continent-size siege blankets the country, killing untold thousands and making a mockery of the nation’s heat records. The same, of course, is true elsewhere, from the Middle East to China, Japan and so too southern Europe, where our foe continues to fuel firestorms that recast scenes of the sublime into chiaroscuro hellscapes.
It’s our new quotidian nightmare, though one, the sober lesson of paleoclimatology tells us, far more unsparing than we can possibly imagine.
In a nod to the gathering force of the enemy, similar assaults have been wielded against much of South America over the course of the region’s winter, where normally congenial conditions have given way to temperatures that partake in the surreal and absurd. The heat, at times exceeding the high 30s, has been so disorienting, so severe, that seals and other marine life have been sighted making their way to the beaches, only to die in the extremities. The winter heatwave is one of the most “extreme events the world has ever seen,” said climatologist Maximiliano Herrera — one that’s “rewriting all the books”.
Except, of course, the continent’s experience in this sense is far from singular. As Maui and its people burned, as gargantuan hail and eerie flooding savaged northern Italy, as remnants of a freak hurricane unleashed historic floods in California’s otherwise blistering Death Valley, and as flooding — veritably biblical in scope — has submerged parts of the Horn of Africa, China, Japan, Pakistan and, most recently, Austria too, an invisible wildfire has plundered half of the earth’s roiling oceans, reducing large swathes of its iridescent coral rainforests into white graveyards of grief.
Our foe’s weapon of choice, neither secret nor surprising, is untrammelled heat in all its obscene, off-the-charts power. And though novel search-and-rescue missions have ensued in some areas, success has proven frighteningly elusive.
“We are,” said the pioneering climate scientist James Hansen two weeks ago, “entering a new climate frontier.” One not seen in a million years, and one which explains the disabusing of the present moment in all its terrible grandeur. The last time our fickle ice-age planet contended with comparable levels of atmospheric carbon was, after all, more than 3 million years ago during the lost and ancient world of the Pliocene epoch, when sea levels were more than 30 metres higher and temperatures some 4 degrees hotter.
Such insights may or may not explain why winter sea ice equivalent in size and scope to Western Australia has mysteriously failed to materialise in Antarctica, the site of one of the oldest frontiers of the war. Why it is perhaps unsurprising that great tracts of the Greenland ice sheet melted thousands of years ago in comparable or cooler conditions than today. And how, when cast against this backdrop, the truly hair-raising analysis that the great North Atlantic current could collapse within decades, if not years, is far less outlandish than appearances suggest.
In reality, as author and columnist for The New York Times David Wallace-Wells has so exquisitely put it, the unvarnished facts of the current moment simply are hysterical. And together they conspire to spell one incontrovertible truth: that, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are in the midst of a global war, and one which we’re rapidly losing as the enemy — that invisible wisp of carbon and methane — organises a civilisation-scale collapse on our horizon with runaway global warming.
Indeed, the situation today is such that even with immediate systemic action, it’s now likely those in their 60s might yet bear witness to 2 degrees warming in their lifetimes, allowing the panoramic heatwaves, freak storms and flooding of 2023 to survive in their memories as among the milder of this age. Two degrees warming, it bears emphasising, would see the world careen past at least nine climate tipping points, beyond which mass crop failures, epic if not permanent droughts, and the preludes to the coming “water wars”, “killing fields” and global famine awaits.
In all this, death and starvation would shadow at least half the world’s population, and hundreds of millions would find themselves irrevocably displaced.
On this rendering, and as the world approaches 3 degrees warming — expected as early as the 2060s — the footings of civilisation are destined to crack and crumble as economic collapse, outright chaos and armed conflict between countries over resources shift from the margins of the possible to the present.
It’s from this vantage point that the Albanese government, for all its pre-election pro-climate rhetoric, is revealed for the appeaser it is. Rather than confront these horrifying realities with sound climate policies, as promised, and enhanced efforts at global cooperation, the government finds itself utterly preoccupied with China’s rise and maintaining American hegemony, going so far as to accuse those who oppose its polarising support of the half-a-trillion-dollar AUKUS deal of being dangerous, if not delusional, “appeasers”.
At the same time, its gaslighting of the nation over the sincerity of its climate position continues with abandon. As recently as two weeks ago, the prime minister insisted on the ABC’s 7.30 the government had “addressed” the climate challenge by taking it “seriously”, never mind its suite of empty and off-track targets, its carbon credits scam, its approval of new fossil fuel projects, its shallow and unreal analysis of climate change in the Intergenerational Report, its political links to the fossil fuel lobby, and, not least, its refusal to release even a redacted version of the climate threat assessment completed by the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) late last year.
“The only logical conclusion I can come to is that the ONI report directly contradicted the government’s line that China is the greatest security risk to Australia,” David Spratt of the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration told me. “And so, the government has entered into a form of climate denial and secrecy in order to justify AUKUS and its broader foreign affairs position.”
The problem, Spratt went on to say, is that denial of this kind quickly transforms into a refusal to identify with any precision the real and immediate threats facing the nation, and therefore derails attention from the country’s true security priorities.
“We have to be, in an intellectual sense, brutally honest about the risks,” he said. “And where there’s secrecy, you can’t even get to step one, which recognises climate change as a real, existential threat.”
It’s such denial — this unashamed greenwashing and deception on the part of Albanese — that constitutes one of the most pernicious and dangerous frontiers in the climate war. Where the government should be consulting with the nation, it condescends; where it ought to be taking steps to protect the nation, it obfuscates and blinds the nation, taking away what armour it might have; and where it ought to be minimising the level of suffering the climate war is destined to summon, it instead exacerbates it, throwing fuel onto the fire.
In this sense, perhaps it’s altogether too charitable to describe Albanese and his warped priorities as a form of climate appeasement. Perhaps his stance is more akin to those “highly civilised” German bombers George Orwell wrote of in 1940 during the blitz — those he said were “flying over, trying to kill [him]”.
This is especially so, given the combined weight of the world’s climate commitments, if met, would nevertheless condemn the world to at least four degrees warming by the century’s end; and if we were to fail, up to eight degrees warming and possibly beyond. A level of warming, in other words, unseen for some 20 million years.
Why does this government refuse to see the scale of the problem and take appropriate action? Do they think we’ll just forget about it like yesterday’s shock, horror story?
If anyone attached to the PM’s office or Tanya’s posse is reading this, take heed of the following.
We have been warned that this year bushfires are likely to dwarf 2019’s level of destruction. Instead of issuing diktats about planning for fires, DO SOMETHING to stop them.
We will remember every dollar you threw at the fossil fuel companies instead of spending it on transitioning projects and climate amelioration.
We will remind you of the stupid bloody Rio Tinto Tshirt you were sporting.
We will throw the charred corpses of native animals at your feet and thank you for the stench of burning flesh in our nostrils.
We will stand at Parliament’s door waving our insurance policies that will never be honoured and demand that you, the government, replace our lost homes and livelihoods because it was you who left them to burn.
We will en masse take you to court for your failure to fulfill your legal requirement to protect us, the people.
We will never vote for you again.
Ever.
Because in the end you’re just as bad as the other bunch and WE ARE DONE WITH PROCRASTINATION AND WEASEL WORDS.
Yes. When anyone describes how bad or catastrophic recent weather events and their consequences have been, let’s also note we might as well cheer up for now, because in five years time we’ll barely believe things used to be this good. And that will continue for the foreseeable future, generation after generation. How many of us will remain, if any, and what condition they and any other surviving life will be in, by the time the climate stabilises again, is anybody’s guess.
However, when the public react as you say, and of course some already have, they are the ones who will be called terrorists and dealt with accordingly by the government and the forces of law and order.
Go back 15+ years to the noughties when ALP’s Rudd beat Howard’s tired climate science denying LNP, then Gillard, and then Rudd again….
We don’t expect much of the LNP etc. but where were the voices in or around ALP in support of climate science, carbon pricing, transition, environmental and related regulation for compliance?
Like the MSM and way too many Australians, inc those of the left/centre virtue signalling, blaming then making (misinformed) calls for immigration restrictions & population control as an environmental greenwashing, or proxy white Oz othering post ’70s refugees and immigrants for ‘sustainability’, while doing nothing on fossil fuels and emissions, too slack and too easy.
Goat Girl, I stand with you on all you’ve expressed – and will add that a few short years ago , in the space of seven months, calamitous fires in our then, local area, changed my life forever.
We didn’t lose our home, we were among the “lucky ones” but for weeks lived on edge with fires, heat, sirens all within metres.
The air? So thick that I wanted to lie on the ground with my two beautiful old dogs except I didn’t have the energy from packing/unpacking our caravan for evacuation.
The smell of burning animals? It will stay with me, and I can discern the difference believe it or not, as I’m sure thousands can and distinguish from burning eucalyptus.
The knowledge? That less than a kilometre away, our tourist beach through the scrub and sand, was piled with dead and dying animals, suffering horrendously….with locals calling for volunteers to help as the council told them not to.
The onslaught of bushflies , yes flies – over the first few days as they tried to escape in the millions, plastered to our windows, doors, us when we went outside (never did we encounter even one bushfly over the next couple of summers before we moved).
The stories? Local apiarists in tears over the loss of millions of bees in their hives, birds dropping from the skies in exhaustion or with severe burns, animals, dead animals and of course people, pets, livestock.
Those sirens? My poor old dogs, were never the same, freaking out constantly until they too died suddenly a year or more later.
But we were lucky to a point. And I say that because it affected my lungs from the beginning, to the point where I’m on borrowed time, like so many thousands of others.
The shocking realisation of isolation. Small tourist town, few resources for something never seen at such a scale before, no preparation, newer “estates” with one road in/out , much like the main road into the town – and no public hospital – for any large scale emergency, which it could easily have become.
All surrounded by towering trees, with signs purporting that people were entering “koala zones”.
There’s so much more but it depresses me too much.
I swore I’d contact Morrison and his mates and have my say but I didn’t, too sick and then we all had the pandemic to deal with…I live with the knowledge I probably could have done something to let government know they hadn’t listened to the previous Fire Chief whose written warnings were ignored by councils, local, state and federal government but it’s too late.
What have they done up there ? Council has allowed the precious trees to be bulldozed (what was left) and permitted more and more “estates” – and were planning a monumental “retirement village” adjacent to and on land that was burned in those fires of a few years ago, right next to the beach where thousands of animals died horrific deaths….all in the name of economic opportunity for the area.
But, now it’s my daughter and grandson’s future I worry most for, and their friends and families ..all the young people, as the world continues to burn and there seems little hope that governments will do anything that threaten their personal livelihoods.
Sorry to ramble on but it needs to be said.
But, in all honesty, experiencing it in even a minor way, as we did, and not as others who lost family members and so much more, it does impact your life forever.
Vyery well said. But how do we get our bureaucrats, pollies and their fossil fuel loving sponsors to act? Our grandkids and their grandkids deserve a sustainable world in 200 years but won’t get it: our disgraceful “masters” will see to that.
It’s no good for apologists to say that this mob isn’t as bad as the last government.
Does it matter when they’re both hell on the same thing: securing jobs as fossil fuel lobbyists whilst killing our kids in the process?
No major party in this country is worthy of a vote.
Period.
Come 2025, we’ll see if the mug punters have found a clue…
While the label of appeaser fits Albanese up to a point in his response to the global heating enemy, he is really more a Quisling than a Chamberlain. For all his faults, Chamberlain did not want to encourage war or help the enemy, he was just misguided. Albanese’s only resolute actions in response to global heating are increasing fossil fuel emissions and crushing those who protest, while talking a lot about doing something, sometime, to combat climate change; which might be called a lot of hot air.
“weak as piss ” apt desciption
The only reason he would act in this way, the only possible explanation, is he is being rewarded by persons who benefit from maintaining the situation. So he gets a few bucks then we all get fried including him. Lose, lose.
As you say, Michael, but combined with a failure of imagination – the one thing that separates us from other animals.
The failure is on two counts – failure to imagine the world as predicted by the scientists, and failure to imagine what is to be done anyway.
Well expressed Maeve.Deeply appreciate your articles.
Truoble is, what will we do about it?
What CAN we do about it?
The time bomb is ticking.
hmmm, “time bomb” … are you suggesting we need to start blowing things up?
I know what target I’d choose, but the modbot won’t let me mention it.
A good start would be the levees and embankments of Cubby station – let the water run down the Channel country as it has done since diprotodons wallowed there.
If properly set in the northernmost one, a small charge would open the wall, the water would soon enlarge it and the resultant flows would take out those down stream
That would be the Cubby station that Penny Wong failed to buy out when it was up for sale at a cheap price.
The very one.
Growing a crop which is dirt cheap and abundantly available from other countries with abundant rainfall.
Not the driest inhabited continent with subsidised, dare one say STOLEN, water from an alrady overextracted river system.
One does dare say STOLEN, just as the land it’s on was, if you want to go down that path. And a good charge of your preferred explosive, judiciously placed, would certainly be helpful in making the point that water shouldn’t ‘belong’ to anyone, regardless of how big their political donations might be.
However might I disagree on the wallowing of the diprotodons. As an ancestor of the wombat I’m not sure water would have been their preferred habitat, but happy to be informed otherwise.
In other news, a local fashion house is now trying to make a virtue out of the fact that their Tshirts are made from cotton organically grown in Australia, although the cotton is shipped off to China to be processed and turned into garments for the environmentally obtuse. Do they not understand irony?
They are such well written and researched articles.
I hope they are available free on the main website.
The harsh and uncomfortable truth is the “world’s” response to climate change lies almost entirely in the hands of China (by far the most emissions) and the USA (basically sets policy direction for the developed world), and to a small degree India (lots of growth still to come), Russia (lots of emissions and FF exports) and the EU (collectively lots of emissions).
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and sixth largest exporter of gas.
Re China – one reason of many as to why Aukus is a terrible idea. Instead of trying to isolate them in the playground, we should we working with them on climate change.
China’s efforts at decarbonisation are truly amazing.
The most objective measurement to me is Per Capita – not total emissions per country (remember China’s population is about 1.4 billion).
Had a quick look, the wikepedia article showed (Metric tons of CO2 per capita)
Trouble is, that was as at 2018.
I’ll try to get more up to date info when I have time.
Trouble is, the drivel we get from our own government is “Oooh, but we’re not burning it all. We’re just selling it to other countries.)
Does that mean that If I choose to sell heroin to New Guinea I’m just fine ?
Data from 2020 (Metric tons of CO2 per capita)
Australia – 14.8 (7th highest in the world)
USA – 13.0 (10th)
China – 7.8 (20th)
CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) | Data (worldbank.org)
Also, I think that drug laws are state based – so surely just sell interstate 🙂
The planet doesn’t care about per-capita (which is not an excuse not to reduce it, just a fact).
China’s per-capita CO2 is low because there’s a lot of and they’re most still relatively poor. Same for India.
The important point here is that their emissions still have a long way to rise.
Why was there put in position for third world countries to be able to continue using fossil fuels for energy instead of helping them to purchase cheaply renewables? I have never understood why that is allowed.
because the fossil fuel companies helped to write the position the UN councils took. That’s why we have ‘Net Zero by 2050’ as a ‘goal’. ‘Net zero’ means we keep burning fossil fuels, but we somehow counter this with remedial tree growing (ha ha) and industrial scale carbon-capture (ha ha ha) to soak up the fossil fuel carbon. Those measures were also proposed by the fossil-fuel-funded national delegates from John Howard’s government who scuppered the Kyoto Conference to insist on Net-Zero-ism. P.S. Fossil carbon is derived from the carbon in Carbonate rocks, it is not the cycling carbon of the living world’s current biomass. It is millions of years in the making and represents prior generations of forest trees (coal) and sea microorganisms (oil and gas). It is EXTRA carbon beyond the carbon budget of the world, and cannot be removed now that we have released i
The Carboniferous Age lasted 90m years.
It has been estimated that we have used 1/3 to 1/2 of “gettable” coal since the Industrial Revolution started and at the current rate will use the other 2/3 to 1/2 within the next 50 – 150 years.
If that “gettable” coal is only a quarter of that which lies under our feet, in 400 years we will have sent back into the atmosphere the same amount of Carbon that took 1/4 of 90 m years, that is 22,500.00 years to accumulate.
Even if its as low as 10% that is in 400 years we will have sent back into the atmosphere what took 9m years to accumulate.
Yes, and I have said before that the only thing Australia could do that might actually impact climate change on a global scale is to cease all fossil fuel exports.
But that would completely **** the place since it’s something like 50% of our exports, so it’s completely unrealistic.
That’s why the globe needs a new financial order, based on MMT.
MMT does not change that we import a great deal of stuff, and need to export a great deal of stuff in exchange.
We cannot buy things from outside Australia with Australian dollars. We need resources and services to sell. That people actually want to buy.
Perhaps if Autralians were smarter they would have voted for Shorten when wanted to mine our to make our own batteries, electric cars and move miers to mining for renewables that the world is badly in need of, instead of voting for lying weasel who did soc all for this country but send us further into being a pariah. Now Albanese is doing the same by subsidising fossil fuels that is killing the damn planet but, no, let’s cowtow to the profiteering planet killers because we have nothing else to sell. And why is that?
Easy to be wise after the event.
Shorten was derailed by an opposition that played on fears of losing money!! God forbid! We should not have endured 9 years of conservative government.
I’m disappointed by an ALP govt that puts bogus fears of China before JUSTIFIED fears of climate catastrophe. What else? The project of little green men a la David Grusch?
Shorten lost because he was a hollow man filled with focus grouped concepts each morning by handlers.
He had no interest and less understanding of the words he learned by hence his telling different audiences whatever they wanted to hear.
Apparently he was unaware of the newfangled telegraph thingy which meant others elsewhere heard his duplicitous performances and realised that he was not to be trusted.
Not that this PM is any different – both a creatures of different factions of the Machine without any real world experience or life beyond politics.
Poor country Australia. Too stupid to make things. Economy depends on digging stuff up.
So sad.
“Poor country Australia. Too stupid to make things. Economy depends on digging stuff up.
So sad.”
Actually, as individuals we’re right up there, and some of our organisations did pretty well before neoliberalism turned them into zombies (WiFi , CSIRO for instance). It’s the unrelenting corruption and class war from the ruling class which holds us back at every turn.
That is why the government is unable to act, they have to wait for international pressure to block fossil fuel trade. Ff and related business has told them that’s the way it is and no government can take on that sort of power/money.
They should resign in protest.
Well they don’t have to wait, but turning a country that has relied on the ease and simplicity of resource exports (be they dirt or animals) for most of its modern history to the hard work necessary to actually create stuff is not for the faint-hearted, and we have an overabundance of faint-hearted politicians.
Neither of the two potential Overlords in our looming future want this country to ‘make stuff‘ – both just want our raw materials, as quickly & cheaply as possible.
As is currently the case.
There’s only one overlord and it’s the same one that lorded over us since WWII. They tell us to jump and , we ask, ‘How high?’
As a Mr Zimmerman used to sing, “The Times, they are a’changin‘”- that’s why we are seeing the last death throes of a failed state.
Hegemons always rot from within, long before they fall.
Often without external intervention.
See the good ol’ US of A for a day-by-day program of how things are likely to progress here.
Yes it is this pressure that stops politicians from actually allowing us to make and prepare for a future. They should explain clearly why they are in an untenable position and resign, new elections called for and policies in tune with managing a science based local/ international future.
The even harsher truth is that as flawed as China’s energy policy is, they have stepped up massively in the last 12 months.
In the first half of 2023, they installed more RE than the rest of the world combined.
Let us also not forget that new EV sales have shyrocketed there as well, and with strict new laws on ICE car emissions set to come into force at the end of the year, EV sales there could have a solid majority as early as 2024.
India by far the most irresponsible country.
It was only in the 80’s their population was about 750 million. Good on them for landing an object on the moon, but they will burn everyone to get there.
When the old Raj ended in 1947 there were 340M and within the current borders of India about 250M.
When I first travelled the subcontinent in 1966 there were fewer than 500M and Nehru then his daughter were strong advocates of birth control, freeschooling,uniforms and health care for families with up to 3 children.
The Indian Census of 1981 found it was 685M and various nonCongress regimes abandoned birth control as a national goal.
Today it exceeds 1.4B (more than China where the population is starting to decline) and still rising.
The annual increase is 18,500,000 – 2/3 of this country’s total.
Discuss.
False, Sanyal an Indian economist and demographer, like others inc Bricker & Ibbitson more recently, called out the UNPD a decade ago for overstating and/or inflating existing and future fertility forecasts, for big headlines…..
India like elsewhere is now below replacement at 2.0 and like everywhere, falling; much of any headline population growth now is due to better health outcomes, longevity and people staying in data longer, while locally that has been driven by oldies and now the baby boomer bubble/bomb, not fertility.
A brilliant and terrifying summation Maeve, thank you.
I am 71 and already worried sick for what I will see before I shuffle off, but what my kids and grandkids will almost certainly suffer is just horrific.