05/09/2026
Total Fire Ban Today in Sydney (Australia).
Yep, it's only the start of Spring, the 5th of September, and the fire danger is rated as Extreme.
Humans, are we getting the message yet about the climate emergency?
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Over 40 years ago I was in primary school when global warming and the "greenhouse effect" was first mentioned. We did worksheets to learn more about it and what it meant. I have newspaper clippings from that time as it was being talked about by the government and the premier of Victoria, John Cain.
My dad worked for the SEC (State Electricity Commission) which was aware of what this meant for the future of coal fired electricity.
When I've had a look at some scraps of material published around this time, you get the sense that there was genuine acknowledgement this was a real problem. It was also the time of the discovery of the hole in the Ozone Layer which was yet another harsh lesson that we could destroy or degrade the global systems required for life to thrive on the planet. AND we could do something about it to change course.
I forgot about all this stuff as a teenager. Too busy having fun and getting through school. It wasn't until my mid 20's that I started to learn more deeply about climate science. This included learning about the massive changes in conditions that Earth has undergone through various epochs of time. There have been little ice ages, and very big ones and times when the Earth was much hotter. 252 million years ago there was a period where equatorial temperatures are believed to have risen to 50-60 degrees celsius after excessive volcanic activity released large volumes of gases that disrupted the atmosphere and weather systems. Scientists call it The Great Dying given those temperatures and conditions were devastating to plants, animals and many other life forms. Earth has in fact been through 5 mass extinction events. Some say we are in the midst of the 6th, induced by human activity.
As I read and learned more about climate change, I developed the sense that we were living in a bubble of denial where things were OK, life was good for now, but at some point that bubble would burst. The climate systems/patterns that had been relatively stable for thousands of years would start to unravel and Earth would shift into a far more volatile and chaotic phase.
It feels to me we have arrived at that point when you look at the events of the last 12 months. And it's been building for many years.
Earlier in the year I witnessed something that was hard to believe, but certainly left its mark on me. Extreme flash flooding occurred down along the great ocean road where I was on holidays. Two days later I drove into one of the nearby towns to see cars washed up on the beach and floating in the ocean. WTF! Large vehicles, smashed, destroyed. Picked up and carried to the ocean by the river that flooded the caravan park unexpectedly. It was surely luck that no one was killed given the river washed through places where people were camping. I later found out my friend Richmond was camping there and lost his car in the flood.
Now that event was tiny, even minuscule compared to what happened in Nepal. But I was shocked. I've spent many years visiting that part of the world and had never witnessed anything like that before. This event gave me a glimpse of the raw power of nature, and how small and inconsequential we are when that power is unleashed. I also felt very uneasy about the fact that significant loss of life could easily have occurred. Particularly if the flooding had occurred at night when everyone was sleeping.
After that, we came back home and forgot about what we saw. Life goes on. Back to business as usual.
At this point in time, I have the distinct feeling that most of us are still living in a "business as usual" mindset, with little change to our lifestyles and expectations for the future. We are too busy to realise how much the ground is shifting under our feet. Perhaps this is the way of people and humanity, we don't change until we have to, or it's really obvious there's a problem that directly effects us. But as the months and years roll on, I suspect it will become painfully obvious that we are on a trajectory that is increasingly dangerous, confronting, confusing and difficult to adapt to, both emotionally and materially.
Australians are bracing for potentially the hottest spring on recor...
