◆ CLIMATE EMERGENCY Image: Inspecting a home destroyed by bushfire. Paul Clifton
Safe as Houses Climate change & the Australian Dream In the flurry of reflection and commentary prompted by summer’s catastrophic bushfires, it was suggested that climate change had finally become brutally real, that it had hit home, so to speak. While the realities of climate change – extreme weather, increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming and the steady, incremental rise in sea temperatures – have been a worldwide phenomenon for some time, the scale and ferocity of the bushfire crisis seemed an unkind reminder of the dimensions of ecological change we now face as well as the violent consequences of a broken world. Indeed, recent research shows that those either directly or indirectly affected by the fires now feel that climate change and the environment are the most pressing issues that the Government must address.
Dr Fiona Allon, University of Sydney Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 1 ◆ MARCH 2020
