Katharine Murphy: “Dear prime minister. The country is not parched but desiccated, and it is burning like a tinderbox, and people are frightened. They are frightened about today and the terrible business of defending property and saving lives, and they are frightened about whether this is what spring and summer in Australia now looks like as droughts lengthen and deepen, and the fire season extends and intensifies because of climate change — which is what scientists have been trying to tell us all these years, so many times, in so many different ways, experts maligned and mangled in a culture war, pleading to be understood. … Ultimately, we get the politics we deserve. The obfuscation, the false comfort, the changing of the subject, the head-patting, will keep happening as long as we let it. … The only way things will change is if we choose, as a country, to do something else. To take responsibility. To demand something better. Because, ultimately, this, the future, is on us.”
11 December 2019