A new consciousness cannot be built solely on a better scientific understanding of the world; it must be rooted in a different ontology, a different conception of reality.
In the end, the notion of solastalgia may prove more helpful looking forward, for it charts much of the difficult mental terrain that the world will have to traverse.
If a solution to the problem of fire in contemporary Australian society is to be found, it will not be at a purely technical level but will require a deep cultural and psychic reorientation.
It was not only the scale of social and material destruction of the world wars but the collective experience of suffering that enabled the post-conflict remaking of societies.
I’m edgy when writing about the limits of hope. I’ve read many accounts that more or less insist that without this emotion there is nothing but bottomless despair. I don’t buy that.
The breakdown of the climate will produce a febrile emotional milieu. Fear and blame, grief and helplessness, among a larger set of intense feelings, will wash over and within us.
At a time when the International Energy Agency (IEA) has called for a total moratorium on opening any new coal, oil or gas projects to avoid climate disaster, Woodside is hell-bent on locking in increasing greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.
It is time for climate-change policies and programs at regional, state and federal levels to respond to the productive ‘climate action’ of First Nations people with recognition and respect, and equitable resourcing to allow it to flourish.
The problems they face from this extended economy are so far beyond the state mechanisms still at their command, their business as usual, that their fate may well be to utterly discredit ‘reasonable politics’
We must get better at communicating risk so that communities have the best chance to prepare for the coming onslaughts—to make good decisions and take the best actions they can, whether in fires or floods, heatwaves or severe storms.
The climate wars seem bound to intensify, given that the systemic transformation needed to address our climate and ecological crises is not on offer. At the grassroots of the climate movement, activists are preparing to fight.
Diseases once confined to the tropics, like dengue fever, will find the warming conditions conducive to southerly migration. Currently dengue is confined to sites 200kms north of Brisbane.
