The Classroom Climate War Shaping Australia’s Children - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

The classroom front line where
Australia’s climate wars are shaping a generation

Key Points

Climate education has become entangled in Australia’s wider cultural and political conflicts 1 Teachers increasingly balance scientific consensus against accusations of political activism 4 Rising eco-anxiety among children is reshaping how schools discuss climate risk and catastrophe 7 Many schools remain physically unprepared for worsening heatwaves bushfires and floods 10 Australia’s fossil fuel economy continues to influence debates over what children should learn 12 The struggle over climate literacy may shape Australia’s future economic resilience and democratic stability 15

By mid-morning the asphalt outside a western Sydney primary school had begun to soften beneath a February heatwave.

Teachers kept children indoors as temperatures climbed past 40 degrees.

Air-conditioning failed in two demountable classrooms before lunch.

Several students had already lived through flood evacuations along the Hawkesbury River.

Others remembered the smoke-darkened skies of Black Summer.

Yet inside the classroom the politics surrounding climate change remained strangely fragile.

Teachers could discuss greenhouse gases in science lessons.

Open conversations about fossil fuel politics, economic disruption or climate grief required greater caution.

Across Australia, climate education has quietly become one of the country’s most contested cultural battlegrounds.

The curriculum battlefield

The Australian Curriculum formally recognises climate change as a cross-curriculum priority, yet explicit teaching remains concentrated within selected science and geography units in Years 9 and 10.

That limited framing sits uneasily beside warnings from defence planners, insurers and economists that climate disruption will shape nearly every sector of Australian life.^{1 2}

Curriculum debates have increasingly mirrored earlier Australian political conflicts surrounding Indigenous history, same-sex relationships and national identity.

Conservative commentators frequently accuse schools of ideological activism.

Environmental groups argue the curriculum still understates the scale of future risk.

Behind the public arguments sits the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, known as ACARA.

During successive curriculum reviews, the agency has faced lobbying from advocacy organisations, political parties and industry-aligned think tanks over the wording of climate-related material.

Several conservative lobby groups have publicly criticised what they describe as “activist teaching” around emissions reduction and sustainability.³

Teachers describe a quieter pressure.

In parts of Queensland and the Hunter Valley, educators working near coal and gas industries say classroom discussions can become socially delicate.

Students often have parents employed directly in mining or export infrastructure.

Few teachers describe overt censorship. Many describe self-censorship instead.

One regional secondary teacher, speaking anonymously to avoid professional repercussions, said staff frequently avoided discussions about fossil fuel phase-outs.

“You learn where the boundaries are,” she said. “People worry about complaints.”

Science education or political advocacy?

Australia’s climate debate has created an unusual educational problem.

Climate science itself is overwhelmingly settled within the scientific community.⁴

The political response remains deeply contested.

That tension leaves teachers navigating a narrow path between scientific literacy and accusations of activism.

Discussing rising emissions without discussing fossil fuels can feel incomplete. Discussing fossil fuels inevitably enters political territory.

Many teachers now frame lessons around critical analysis rather than moral instruction.

Students are encouraged to compare adaptation strategies, emissions policies and economic trade-offs.

Yet the emotional atmosphere surrounding climate change often overwhelms detached analysis.

Teenagers consume a constant stream of disaster footage through TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Climate narratives arrive long before formal curriculum materials do.

Research from Monash University and other Australian institutions suggests younger Australians increasingly view climate disruption not as a future abstraction but as a lived condition.⁵

Teachers say students now arrive carrying anger, fatalism and distrust toward older political leaders.

Some educators worry classrooms are becoming emotionally overloaded. Others argue avoiding the subject altogether would be more damaging.

The debate increasingly resembles a broader national argument over whether education should merely describe the world or prepare children to change it.

Children absorbing catastrophe

During the Black Summer bushfires many Australian children watched flames approach homes through mobile phone screens.

Others breathed hazardous smoke for weeks.

The psychological consequences continue to surface inside classrooms.

Surveys conducted after major climate disasters have found elevated levels of anxiety and emotional distress among young Australians exposed to repeated extreme weather events.^{6 7}

Child psychologists increasingly caution against doom-heavy messaging that presents societal collapse as inevitable.

Fear without agency can become psychologically corrosive.

Several Australian education researchers now advocate “trauma-informed climate education”.

The approach emphasises practical adaptation, collective problem-solving and emotional resilience alongside scientific instruction.

Primary school teachers describe difficult conversations following floods and bushfires. Children ask whether their towns will disappear. Some ask whether adults have already failed them.

Social media frequently intensifies those fears. Algorithms reward emotionally charged catastrophe narratives.

Teachers increasingly compete against an online information ecosystem built around outrage, despair and spectacle.

Several universities now offer teacher training modules addressing eco-anxiety and emotionally difficult classroom discussions.

Coverage remains inconsistent across states and institutions.

Mental health experts warn that climate anxiety cannot be separated from lived reality.

For many Australian children, climate disruption is no longer theoretical.⁸

Schools preparing minds but not survival

Despite years of worsening disasters, practical climate preparedness remains surprisingly absent from most Australian classrooms.

Students learn the chemistry of greenhouse gases.

Few receive systematic instruction in heatwave survival, evacuation planning or household resilience.

That gap became painfully visible during the 2022 floods across northern New South Wales.

Several schools were isolated by rising water. Families improvised emergency responses with limited guidance.

Education departments have since reviewed disaster planning procedures, yet adaptation education still varies widely between states.⁹

Heat poses a growing threat inside schools themselves.

Research by the Climate Council and infrastructure experts has found many Australian public schools remain poorly designed for extreme temperatures.¹⁰

Older buildings trap heat.

Low-income communities often possess the weakest cooling infrastructure.

Several teachers describe classrooms becoming effectively unusable during prolonged heatwaves.

Practical resilience education can still trigger accusations of alarmism.

Emergency planning carries political implications because it acknowledges future disruption as unavoidable.

Yet Australian children already participate in swimming lessons and road safety education precisely because risk exists.

Climate adaptation may soon require similar normalisation.

Following the money through the curriculum

Australia remains one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas.

That economic reality shadows educational debates.

Schools in mining regions often sit inside communities economically dependent on fossil fuel industries.

Conversations about transition therefore become conversations about local survival.

Industry-sponsored educational programs further complicate the landscape.

Energy corporations have funded school initiatives focused on sustainability, engineering and environmental stewardship.

Critics argue some materials minimise the contradictions between emissions reduction targets and continued fossil fuel expansion.¹¹

Meanwhile, environmental advocates accuse governments of sanitising discussions around Australia’s emissions profile and export economy.

The contradiction remains visible to students.

Australia publicly commits to decarbonisation while approving new fossil fuel projects.¹²

Young Australians increasingly recognise the inconsistency.

Teachers say many students already understand climate politics through lived economic realities.

Some teenagers openly question whether governments genuinely believe their own climate targets.

That growing cynicism worries educators almost as much as climate denial itself.

Whose knowledge counts?

Climate education also intersects with older Australian tensions surrounding colonisation, land management and Indigenous knowledge.

For decades Aboriginal ecological practices received little serious attention within mainstream curricula.

The Black Summer bushfires altered parts of that conversation.

Cultural burning practices gained renewed national visibility after catastrophic fires exposed failures in conventional fuel management approaches.¹³

Many schools now incorporate First Nations perspectives into environmental education.

Indigenous educators caution against superficial inclusion.

Some describe schools treating traditional ecological knowledge as symbolic rather than structurally important.

Remote Indigenous communities already experience climate disruption differently from metropolitan Australia.

Rising temperatures, water insecurity and infrastructure vulnerability intersect with longstanding social disadvantage.

Several Indigenous scholars argue climate education could become part of broader reconciliation efforts if taught with genuine consultation and historical honesty.¹⁴

That requires confronting uncomfortable national histories around land clearing, extraction and ecological degradation.

Not every political constituency welcomes those discussions.

A generation preparing for permanent instability

Australia’s climate curriculum increasingly reveals a deeper national uncertainty.

No consensus exists about whether schools should prepare children for manageable transition or prolonged instability.

Some educators emphasise technological optimism, renewable industries and adaptation engineering.

Others fear schools are producing climate-aware students who still feel politically powerless.

International comparisons sharpen the tension.

Countries such as Finland and Sweden increasingly embed climate literacy across economics, civics and literature rather than confining it primarily to science subjects.¹⁵

Australian curriculum reform has moved more cautiously.

Teacher capacity remains uneven.

Professional development opportunities vary significantly between systems and regions.

Many educators still rely on fragmented or outdated materials.

The political volatility surrounding climate education continues to discourage bold reform.

Yet children are already forming their own conclusions.

They see insurance retreat from flood-prone regions.

They experience school closures during heatwaves.

They scroll through endless footage of fires storms and collapsing ecosystems.

Classrooms are no longer introducing climate disruption.

They are attempting to interpret a reality students already inhabit.

The unfinished lesson

Australia’s struggle over climate education reflects a larger national discomfort with the future itself.

Schools are being asked to prepare children for economic transformation, ecological instability and psychological strain while the broader political system still argues over language, responsibility and urgency.

That contradiction cannot remain neatly contained within curriculum documents.

Students already understand climate change through lived experience long before they encounter formal scientific frameworks.

The deeper question is no longer whether Australian children should learn about climate disruption.

The question is whether institutions can teach it honestly without collapsing into ideological warfare, despair or denial.

Future historians may judge the current moment less by the sophistication of curriculum wording than by whether Australia equipped children with resilience, critical literacy and democratic trust during an era of accelerating instability.

Climate education now sits at the intersection of science, politics, psychology and national identity.

Every heatwave, flood and bushfire will continue dragging that intersection further into public view.

The students sitting inside overheated classrooms today may eventually inherit the consequences of whichever version of reality adults finally decide to teach.

References

1. CSIRO Climate Change Information
2. Climate Council Climate Risk Map Australia
3. ACARA Australian Curriculum Review
4. IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report
5. Monash Lens Climate Anxiety Research
6. Medical Journal of Australia Bushfire Mental Health Effects
7. Lancet Planetary Health Youth Climate Anxiety Study
8. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Youth Mental Health
9. NSW School Emergency Management Framework
10. Climate Council Extreme Heat and Schools Report
11. Australia Institute Fossil Fuel Subsidies Report
12. Australian Government Climate Change Policy
13. National Museum of Australia Fire-stick Farming
14. Reconciliation Australia Environmental and Cultural Resources
15. OECD Environmental Literacy and Education Research

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Climate Change: The New Fault Line In Australia’s Housing Crisis - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Climate change is beginning to fracture
Australia’s housing system from the edges inward

Key Points

Climate change is emerging as a major driver of housing stress and homelessness in Australia 1 Insurance costs are reshaping property markets across flood and bushfire zones 2 Lower-income Australians face growing exposure to climate-linked displacement 3 Repeated disasters are colliding with a critically undersupplied housing market 4 Researchers warn climate impacts may permanently alter internal migration patterns 5 Governments are still largely treating housing and climate policy as separate crises 6

By late afternoon the heat had settled heavily over western Sydney.

Along the Hawkesbury floodplain, newly built estates stretched across former paddocks where insurance premiums have already begun rising faster than wages.

Rows of pale brick homes shimmered beneath a dry autumn sky. Builders were still pouring slabs. Young families were still moving in.

Yet beneath the appearance of expansion, another reality was beginning to intrude. Australia’s housing crisis is no longer only about interest rates, rents or supply shortages. 

Climate change is increasingly shaping who can afford to live where, which suburbs remain financially viable, and who absorbs the growing costs of environmental instability.

New modelling from researchers Peyman Habibi-Moshfegh and Associate Professor Nader Naderpajouh at the University of Sydney suggests homelessness in Australia could rise fourfold within a decade under high-emissions scenarios.¹ 

Even lower-emissions futures produced worsening rental stress, declining affordability and deeper inequality.

The findings arrive as Australia’s housing system is already under strain.

National rents remain near record highs. Vacancy rates in many cities remain critically low. Construction firms continue collapsing under cost pressures that intensified after the pandemic and successive disasters.⁷

Climate change acts less like a separate crisis than an accelerant poured onto an existing one.

The hidden climate costs embedded in housing

For years, public debate around housing affordability revolved around migration, tax concessions and planning restrictions.

Climate risk remained largely peripheral.

That is beginning to change.

Across northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland, insurers have sharply increased premiums following repeated flood disasters.² 

In some communities, cover has become difficult to obtain altogether. The Insurance Council of Australia estimates more than one million Australian properties already face some level of high climate risk exposure.⁸

For households already stretched by mortgages or rents, insurance becomes another destabilising expense layered onto electricity bills, food prices and rising debt repayments.

The effect compounds quietly. Owners in vulnerable regions often face rising maintenance costs, declining resale confidence and growing uncertainty over future lending conditions.

Renters remain even more exposed. Landlords can pass adaptation costs directly onto tenants in tight markets where vacancy rates remain below equilibrium.

The researchers argue climate impacts are likely to reshape housing affordability through multiple channels simultaneously, including insurance, infrastructure damage, labour shortages, disrupted construction supply chains and disaster recovery costs.¹

Under some scenarios, home ownership costs could double.

Rental affordability could deteriorate by almost 45%.

When disasters collide with a housing shortage

In Lismore, the scars of the 2022 floods remain visible years later.

Entire streets still carry the memory of waterlines. Some residents never returned. Others remained trapped between damaged homes, insurance disputes and a rental market already struggling before the disaster struck.⁴

Researchers and homelessness advocates increasingly warn that repeated disasters create pathways into long-term housing insecurity even for previously stable households.

A flood destroys savings. Insurance payouts fall short. Temporary accommodation becomes prolonged. Rents rise as displaced residents compete for shrinking housing stock.

The process can unfold surprisingly quickly.

Homelessness services across Australia are already reporting greater pressure following climate-linked disasters, particularly in regional areas with limited housing supply.⁹

Extreme weather also interacts unevenly with geography and class.

Affluent coastal suburbs often possess greater political influence, stronger infrastructure and higher insurance resilience.

Lower-income outer suburban growth corridors frequently carry greater exposure to heat, transport disruption and infrastructure vulnerability.

Western Sydney provides a stark example.

Many of the city’s most affordable growth areas are also among its hottest.¹⁰

Residents already facing mortgage stress often absorb extreme summer temperatures in poorly insulated homes while carrying rising energy costs.

Insurance is becoming a gatekeeper

Climate change increasingly threatens to reshape the financial architecture beneath Australian housing.

Insurers occupy the front line. Without insurance, banks become reluctant to lend. Without lending, property markets begin weakening.

Researchers have warned of a cascading effect where insurance retreat contributes to declining property values, tighter lending conditions and long-term economic stagnation in exposed communities.¹¹

Some analysts compare the dynamic to forms of climate redlining already emerging internationally.

Australia has not yet experienced large-scale financial abandonment of entire suburbs.

Yet warning signs are appearing.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has already directed banks and insurers to strengthen climate-risk stress testing across their portfolios.¹²

Financial institutions increasingly understand that climate risk is not abstract environmental risk.

It is mortgage risk. Asset risk. Systemic economic risk.

The political implications remain uncomfortable. Australia’s economy has long depended heavily on rising property values. Entire retirement strategies, state revenues and household wealth expectations sit atop assumptions of perpetual growth.

Climate change complicates that assumption. Some areas may eventually become technically habitable yet economically unliveable because insurance, finance and infrastructure costs become prohibitive.

A widening inequality divide

The burden is unlikely to fall evenly.

The University of Sydney modelling suggests low-income Australians, renters and households already vulnerable to housing insecurity will absorb the greatest impacts.¹

Climate change risks hardening existing inequality into geography.

Higher-income Australians possess greater capacity to relocate, retrofit homes or absorb rising insurance costs.

Lower-income households often remain concentrated in more exposed areas because they have fewer alternatives.

Older women remain particularly vulnerable. Homelessness among older Australian women has already risen sharply during the past decade due to insecure work histories, divorce, limited superannuation and rising rents.¹³

Climate shocks could deepen those pressures.

First Nations communities also face disproportionate exposure. Remote communities frequently confront overlapping housing shortages, infrastructure vulnerabilities and extreme climate risks, including heat and flooding.¹⁴

The crisis increasingly blurs distinctions between environmental policy and social policy. Climate change is no longer only about emissions trajectories or ecological systems. It is becoming a question of who retains secure shelter.

Governments are still operating in silos

Housing policy and climate policy remain largely separated across Australian governments.

Planning frameworks frequently continue assuming historical climate stability even as conditions shift.

Disaster recovery often prioritises rebuilding quickly rather than reconsidering whether some locations remain sustainable long term.

The tension is politically explosive.

Managed retreat from vulnerable regions remains deeply unpopular.

Rebuilding also carries escalating costs.

Following major floods and bushfires, governments often spend billions restoring infrastructure and housing in areas likely to face repeated disasters.¹⁵

Researchers increasingly argue that every major housing policy should undergo climate-impact modelling before implementation.

Well-intended policies can produce unintended consequences if climate pressures intensify faster than anticipated.

Large housing developments in heat-prone outer suburbs may expand supply while locking lower-income households into areas with rising environmental exposure and infrastructure stress.

Climate-resilient social housing remains critically underdeveloped.

So does long-term adaptation planning.

Australia still spends substantially more on post-disaster recovery than proactive resilience investment.¹⁶

The housing market is beginning to absorb climate reality

For decades, Australia’s housing system operated on an assumption of environmental continuity.

Floodplains expanded. Coastal developments accelerated. Outer suburban estates pushed further into heat-exposed corridors. Climate science existed largely outside the economics of ordinary housing decisions.

That separation is weakening. Property buyers increasingly examine flood histories and insurance estimates before purchasing. Banks are quietly assessing long-term climate exposure. Local councils confront mounting pressure over zoning and infrastructure resilience.

The transformation remains uneven. In some regions, climate risk still appears significantly underpriced. Many Australians continue purchasing homes in areas facing escalating flood or bushfire exposure because affordability pressures leave few alternatives.

The researchers warn that climate-driven displacement may increasingly reshape internal migration patterns across Australia.⁵

Some communities may grow rapidly as safer zones attract investment. Others may gradually weaken beneath the weight of repeated disasters and financial retreat.

The social consequences could become profound. Australia has historically treated home ownership not simply as shelter but as security, stability and citizenship itself. Climate change threatens to destabilise all three simultaneously.

The unresolved future beneath the crisis

By the mid-2030s, Australia’s housing crisis may look very different from today’s version.

The familiar arguments over tax concessions and planning approvals will likely remain.

Yet they may sit inside a broader reality where climate volatility increasingly shapes financial viability, insurance access, infrastructure resilience and human displacement.

The most unsettling aspect of the University of Sydney research lies not only in the projected scale of homelessness. It lies in how plausible the mechanisms already appear.

Australians are not confronting a distant hypothetical future. Many elements of the transition are already visible across flood-hit towns, overheated suburbs and insurance markets quietly recalculating risk.

Governments still possess opportunities to reduce the worst outcomes through resilient housing investment, stronger planning frameworks and emissions reduction.

Researchers stress that policy choices remain enormously consequential. Yet the window for gradual adjustment appears narrowing.

Australia’s housing system evolved during a relatively stable climatic period. The country is now entering something far less predictable.

And beneath the pressure of rising heat, repeated disasters and deepening inequality, the question is no longer whether climate change will shape housing.

It already is.

References

1. Homelessness could be four times higher in a decade due to impacts from climate change, University of Sydney
2. Climate Risk Map of Australia, Climate Council
3. Homelessness and homelessness services, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
4. Lismore flood recovery and housing crisis, ABC News
5. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II
6. Australian Government Housing Policy Framework
7. Australian inflation and construction cost data, Australian Bureau of Statistics
8. Catastrophe Resilience Report, Insurance Council of Australia
9. Homelessness Australia reports and analysis
10. Western Sydney heat vulnerability research, Western Sydney University
11. Climate change risks to Australian banks, Reserve Bank of Australia
12. Climate Vulnerability Assessment, APRA
13. Older women and homelessness risk, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
14. First Nations health and climate vulnerability research, Lowitja Institute
15. Natural disaster funding arrangements, Productivity Commission
16. Climate adaptation and resilience policy analysis, Climate Change Authority

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The Coming Famine - Julian Cribb

Surviving the 21st Century - Julian Cribb

AUTHOR Julian Cribb AM ATSE is an Australian science writer and author of seven books on the human existential emergency.  He is Co-founder, Council for the Human Future.  Julian Cribb's latest book is How to Fix a Broken Planet (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

The existing world food crisis is deepening while dangers of famine in the short-term are escalating due to fractures in agricultural supply chains caused by conflict in West Asia. 

However, these short-term crises are superimposed on a far graver, deeper and longer-running risk of a collapse in global food production due to the remorseless combination of climate change and losses of soil, water and biodiversity.

“Acute food insecurity and malnutrition levels remain alarmingly high and deeply entrenched, with crises increasingly concentrated in a core group of countries,” says the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2026. 

Over 266 million people in 47 countries are facing acute food scarcity, a number which has doubled in ten years. Overall, 690 million people are malnourished.

Meanwhile the Gulf War is menacing farm production even in countries that deem themselves food secure, by choking off up to >30 per cent of world fertiliser supplies and boosting prices beyond many farmers’ ability to pay. The US, for example, depends on imports from the Gulf for >25% of its fertiliser needs - and is thus shooting itself in the bread-basket by combining with Iran to blockade them.

The impact of the fertiliser choke-off is already affecting crop plantings across the northern hemisphere, heralding sharp rises in global consumer food prices before the end of 2026. The FAO food price index has already started to climb in anticipation.

Figure 1. Key fertiliser products originating from the Persian Gulf. Source: IFPRI

However, these are but surface phenomena in the picture of growing global food insecurity due to human overpopulation, overconsumption and their catastrophic impacts on soil, water, climate and biodiversity.

Soils

A silent disaster is unfolding in the world’s food producing soils: erosion, loss of organic carbon, nutrient depletion, salinization, acidification, chemical pollution, loss of soil biodiversity, soil sealing and urban sprawl. To these have been lately added two more: the damage caused by wars and the destruction of large areas of productive soils by mining and energy extraction.

The soil supplies 94% of humanity’s food needs, and its dramatic decline foreshadows the approaching end of our ability to maintain an agriculture-based food supply within the present century. A recent study noted around half of the Earth’s topsoils are degraded, and this will rise to 95% by 2050.

Farming cannot exist without topsoil to sustain it, and the global estimated soil loss in 2015 was around 28-38 billion tonnes a year to water, tillage, wind erosion (often due to overgrazing). However, these numbers are over a decade old, while the impacts of climate, land clearing and deforestation have all surged. Also, they take no account of the global decline in soil fertility, health and structure.

Few consumers and almost no governments are aware of the catastrophic rate at which modern industrial farming is devouring its topsoil. Many farmers are aware – but are trapped by economics into furthering the destruction. Tragically, industrial farming has now become a form of mining that continues until the resource is exhausted.

Water

Farming currently uses 72% of the world’s available freshwater - but colossal competing demand from burgeoning megacities, IT and AI, the energy and mining sectors, along with the collapse of river systems, groundwater and glaciers means that there will be less and less water available to grow our food and supply our cities. 

At the same time climate change is creating fiercer droughts and floods that devastate farm crops and land.

To feed humanity by the mid-century, the World Bank estimates will require an extra 70% more water. This means it will take 20% more fresh water than the Earth can supply, resulting in a colossal food shortfall.

As these water shortages intensify they will have four main effects: reduced crop production, food scarcity, soaring consumer prices, mass migration and escalating conflict over dwindling food, land and water.

Environment

Agricultural biodiversity – the rich variety of crops, livestock breeds, soil organisms, insects and wild plant relatives that underpin our food systems – is vanishing faster than most people realize warns the Environmental Studies Institute. This directly threatens the ecosystem services – such as pollination, natural pest control, soil health and fertility – that farming depends on to function.

The elements causing the destruction are principally land clearing and the indiscriminate use of 5 million tonnes of agricultural pesticides a year. These pesticides are increasingly deadly – up to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT, for example – killing honeybees and many insects that sustain birds, fish, frogs and other wildlife which in turn control farm pests.

Modern farming systems are thus steadily eliminating the natural resources which make farming possible.

Climate

The world food supply is critically vulnerable to climate impacts – and becoming more so with each passing year. 

As global temperatures rise, the world will start to witness large-scale regional harvest failures due to drought, floods, storms and heat, building steadily towards major famines in the second half of the 21^st century.

Figure 2. Impact of rising degrees of global warming. Source: Roger Hallam. Chart by Gregor Aisch.

To its own detriment, agriculture and food production generate up to 30% of the world’s total climate emissions. This means that every time a farmer starts a tractor today, he is cutting into a future farmer’s harvest, due to the prolonged climate impacts. 

Through fossil fuels, agriculture has evolved into an engine of self-destruction.

World food collapse

Where all this is leading is a collapse of the world food system, universal famine and the deaths of several billion children, women and men. Food prices may well reach the point where they bring down the entire world economy.

The latest – of many – expert views on this unsavoury issue comes from the UK Institute of Actuaries, whose latest report states baldly that humans are making the planet insolvent.

“We are currently managing our global natural assets with a level of negligence that would be unthinkable in any other sector of the economy. We are treating a finite, interconnected ledger of biological wealth as an infinite extraction fund, and the maths simply no longer adds up,” they say. “We are pushing multiple Earth system processes beyond safe operating limits, moving toward tipping points where the damage becomes irreversible on any human timescale.”

The report details a wide range of both chronic and acute risks to the global food system, with severe ramifications for society, the economy and world peace. These occur in the short term and compound in the longer term. Furthermore, it notes widespread failure by policymakers to respond to most of them.

Actuaries are not a profession prone to exaggeration or hyperventilation. If they say “We got a problem”, then we got a problem.

Unfortunately, owing to generous food surpluses in most countries created by agricultural mining of the planet and the destruction of its food system resources, most consumers and governments remain oblivious of the scale of the danger and are doing little or nothing to avoid it. 

This adds to the likelihood of future famines and mass death.

Is there a solution? Certainly. It’s called renewable food. But right now, very few people or companies and almost no governments are taking it seriously.

We will reap the harvest we sow.

Figure 3. Food risks in the short and medium term. Source: Institute of Actuaries Large Image

The Coming Famine was also the title of a book I wrote back in 2008 (University of California Press), foreshadowing the dangers of an unsustainable food system. Many of its predictions are now coming true. I discussed the solutions in a subsequent book Food or War (Cambridge 2019).

Julian Cribb Articles

• The greatest threat to global security
• Turning Waste Into Wealth
• Up to our eyeballs in 💩💩💩
• Plasticide: a crime against humanity Our Rising Oceans
• Will climate change put women in the ascendant?
• When the water runs out...
• The great dying
• Australia issues ‘terrifying’ climate warning
• 'Died of a delusion': the fate of modern civilisation?
• Collapse is near, scientists warn
• De-icing the Earth: a fatal human choice. 
• Rivers of Death
• Unlike politicians, thermometers do not lie
• Welcome to BunkerWorld: Home of the rich and fearful
• Wisdom of the elders
• The black work of Big Oil
• Stealing the Breath of Life
• The Earth Uncloaked - a catastrophe in slow motion 
  
• Military experts warn of climate wars
• Tackling the Earth Emergency
• A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe

The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis - Gregory Andrews

Lyrebird Dreaming - Gregory Andrews

Author Gregory Andrews is: Founder and Managing Director of Lyrebird Dreaming A former Australian Ambassador and High Commissioner in West Africa Australia’s first Threatened Species Commissioner A leader in Indigenous policy

Climate change is usually talked about as an environmental issue. 

Coral reefs, glaciers, bushfires and endangered species etc. All of that matters enormously. But it's also increasingly missing the point. 

The climate crisis is now fundamentally a public health emergency.

This week, a panel of leading international experts convened by the World Health Organization urged it to formally declare the climate crisis a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” - the same highest-level warning mechanism used for pandemics like COVID-19 and Mpox. And honestly, they’re right.

Because the climate crisis is no longer a distant future threat about penguins, polar bears and rising seas. It's already making people sick. It's already killing people. And it's already overwhelming health systems around the world.

• Heatwaves now kill thousands of people every year across Europe, India, North America and Australia.
• Smoke from bushfires triggers asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes.
• Floods contaminate water supplies and spread disease.
• Changing temperatures are expanding mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever into places that never previously had to deal with them. 
• And mental health impacts - from eco-anxiety to trauma after disasters - are rising rapidly.

 And then there’s the air pollution. The same fossil fuels driving climate change are also poisoning the air we breathe. 

According to the WHO, air pollution causes around 7 million premature deaths globally every year. Think about that for a moment. Governments like Australia's are effectively using taxpayers money to subsidise industries whose pollution contributes to millions of early deaths.

Despite claiming to take climate and health seriously, Australia still provides billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies every year - through fuel tax credits, exploration incentives and other support mechanisms. 

While hospitals struggle for funding and ambulance ramping statistics dominate news headlines, we're still underwriting the industries making us sick in the first place. It’s the political equivalent of subsidising cigarettes while warning people not to smoke!

The irony is that serious climate action would produce enormous public health benefits almost immediately:

• Cleaner air. 
• More walkable cities. 
• Better public transport. 
• Less heat stress. 
• More green space. 
• Lower rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. 
• Healthier diets. 
• More active lifestyles.

Climate action is not just about avoiding catastrophe in 2050. It’s about improving human health right now. This is also why the language matters. Calling the climate crisis an “environmental issue” subtly frames it as soft and optional - something to balance against “economic priorities”. 

But calling it what it is - a public health emergency - changes the conversation entirely. Because governments are supposed to respond to public health emergencies urgently. And public health is recognised as an economic priority.

When COVID hit, governments mobilised trillions of dollars, rewrote laws, held daily press conferences and transformed entire economies almost overnight. Yet climate action, which the WHO already describes as the "greatest health threat facing humanity", is still at best treated as another policy debate.

Part of the reason is psychological. Pandemics feel immediate and visible. The climate crisis is unfolding more slowly and unevenly. But the cumulative death toll from heat, smoke, pollution, hunger, disasters and disease will dwarf most modern pandemics if emissions continue unchecked. And unlike many health emergencies, this one is being knowingly fuelled. 

We understand the cause. We understand the consequences. And we already have many of the solutions. What’s missing is political courage.

Australia especially should understand this. We're already seeing worsening bushfires, floods, heatwaves and disease risks. Our health systems are increasingly exposed to climate shocks. Regional communities are on the frontline. And Aboriginal communities - who often contribute least to emissions - are disproportionately exposed to climate impacts, including threats to Country, food systems, housing and cultural wellbeing.

Yet instead of treating climate change like the public health emergency it is, our politics still treats fossil fuel expansion as economic common sense. Future generations will look back on this period with disbelief and anger. 

They will wonder how governments could simultaneously warn about climate danger while subsidising the industries causing it. They will wonder how we normalised mass pollution deaths. And they will wonder why we waited so long to call a public health emergency exactly what it was.

Because this isn't just an environmental crisis anymore. It’s a health crisis. And the emergency department's waiting room is already full.

Gregory Andrews Climate Change Articles

• The Science Is In: Global Warming Is Accelerating
• While We Watch Iran, the Planet Keeps Burning
• Have your say on Canberra’s next Climate Strategy: It will be make or break
• Science Warns of Future Where Billions Bake
• Two Years to 1.7°C: the “Prediction Game” We Can’t Afford to Lose
• Emergency Photos Ops Aren't Climate Leadership
• Why Fascists Reject Climate Science
• Don’t Be Distracted: Earth’s Life Support Systems Are Collapsing
• Diesel rebates for miners and a new EV tax? Australia’s climate policy double-think
• What Gas is That? Get to Know Your Climate Pollutants

The heat is rewriting Australia faster than politics can respond - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Australia is already living inside a climate scientists once feared

Key Points

Australia’s warming trend now sits well beyond historical natural variability 1 Marine heatwaves and coral bleaching are reshaping the Great Barrier Reef faster than recovery cycles allow 2 Heatwaves remain Australia’s deadliest climate disaster despite receiving less public attention 3 Floods and bushfires are exposing planning systems built for a cooler climate 4 The energy transition is accelerating unevenly through political conflict and infrastructure bottlenecks 5 Scientists increasingly warn that Australia is underestimating compound climate risks and social disruption 6

The summer that stopped feeling temporary

By mid-afternoon the air above western Sydney shimmered like distorted glass. Asphalt softened beneath tyres. Ambulance crews carried elderly residents from brick homes that had trapped heat since dawn.

The Bureau of Meteorology no longer describes these events as anomalies. Scientists now speak about Australia’s climate in the language of systems under strain. The country has warmed by roughly 1.5C since 1910, but averages conceal the sharper reality unfolding across the continent.

Nights are warming faster. Marine heatwaves linger longer. Fire seasons bleed into one another. Inland towns across New South Wales and the Northern Territory already experience temperatures approaching the limits of safe outdoor labour.

For decades climate scientists framed extreme heat as a future threat. Attribution science changed that. Researchers can now calculate how much more likely a disaster became because of greenhouse emissions. Heatwaves that once sat at the edge of statistical possibility now arrive with unsettling regularity. ¹

Heat kills quietly. Bushfires produce spectacle. Floods leave visible wreckage. Heatwaves pass without television helicopters overhead, despite remaining Australia’s deadliest climate disaster.

When the models began catching up with reality

Climate models once treated compound disasters as relatively rare overlaps. Scientists now believe many earlier projections underestimated the interaction between drought, extreme heat and intense rainfall.

The Black Summer fires became a turning point. Researchers concluded climate change significantly increased the likelihood of the extreme fire weather conditions that stretched from Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria during 2019 and 2020.

Entire valleys appeared to inhale before fire fronts arrived. Pyrocumulonimbus storms carried embers kilometres ahead of flames. Forests burned with such intensity they generated their own weather systems.

Fire agencies increasingly confront overlapping emergencies rather than isolated seasons. A severe flood year may follow drought with little ecological recovery in between. Insurance losses now accumulate across multiple hazards simultaneously.

Scientists also worry about what remains difficult to model. Abrupt ocean circulation shifts. Simultaneous crop failures. Cascading infrastructure breakdowns. Many projections still rely heavily on median scenarios despite observed warming tracking close to higher-emissions pathways. ⁶

The floodplain remembers even when governments do not

In Lismore the flood markers remain etched into shopfronts years after the water receded. Residents who rebuilt once found themselves rebuilding again.

Warmer oceans now load the atmosphere with greater moisture. During major east coast systems, rainfall falls harder and over shorter periods. Studies examining recent Australian floods suggest many one-in-100-year events no longer reflect contemporary climate risk.

Yet floodplain planning still relies heavily on historical assumptions drawn from older climate baselines. Housing developments continue spreading into vulnerable corridors because retreat remains politically toxic and economically disruptive.

Insurers already operate with a harsher understanding of climate exposure than many public planning systems acknowledge. Premiums across northern Australia continue climbing sharply. In some coastal regions, residents quietly discover coverage disappearing altogether. ⁴

The reef is bleaching faster than it can recover

From the air, sections of the Great Barrier Reef resemble pale scars spreading through turquoise water.

The reef has now experienced repeated mass bleaching events within less than a decade. Scientists once expected severe bleaching perhaps once every several decades. The intervals are collapsing. ²

Marine heatwaves surrounding Australia are intensifying as oceans absorb most of the excess planetary heat generated by greenhouse emissions. Recent bleaching events struck coral systems already weakened by previous heat stress, cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

Researchers have become more cautious about narratives of recovery. Coral ecosystems can rebound after disturbance, but repeated bleaching reduces the time available for regeneration. Some species recover quickly. Others disappear.

Scientists increasingly describe marine heatwaves as Australia’s underreported climate emergency. Unlike bushfires, they remain largely invisible to people on land.

The politics of delay are colliding with physics

Australia speaks two climate languages at once.

Internationally, governments promote renewable investment and emissions targets. Domestically, coal and gas expansion continues through new approvals and export infrastructure.

The contradiction sits at the centre of Australia’s political economy. Fossil fuel exports remain deeply woven into state revenues, regional employment and national trade balances. Communities across the Hunter Valley and central Queensland understand decarbonisation not as an abstract moral question but as a threat to livelihoods built over generations.

Meanwhile, renewable construction accelerates unevenly across the electricity grid. Transmission projects face local opposition over land access and environmental impacts. Supply chain constraints slow deployment.

Scientists argue the central problem is no longer technological feasibility. Australia possesses extraordinary renewable potential through solar, wind and critical minerals. The problem is speed. ⁵

The burden is not shared equally

Climate risk in Australia follows existing inequality.

Low-income suburbs with sparse tree cover routinely experience higher urban temperatures than wealthier coastal districts. Renters possess limited capacity to retrofit homes for heat resilience. Remote Indigenous communities face water insecurity, failing infrastructure and limited healthcare access during extreme weather.

After disasters, recovery money flows unevenly. Wealthier households rebuild faster. Insurance gaps widen. Mental health effects linger for years.

Researchers studying climate anxiety among younger Australians describe a generation shaped by recurring catastrophe. Many reached adulthood through drought, bushfire smoke, floods and coral bleaching.

Repeated emergencies can erode trust in institutions, particularly when governments appear trapped in short electoral cycles. ³

Preparing for a climate that no longer resembles the past

The most difficult conversations in Australian climate science now concern habitability.

What happens to regional economies built around shrinking water supplies? Which coastal communities retreat first? How do cities function through sustained heat exceeding infrastructure design limits?

Researchers examining a 3C warmer Australia describe profound shifts in agriculture, insurance markets, migration and national security. Parts of the continent may become economically difficult to insure long before they become physically unliveable.

The Murray-Darling Basin already reveals the tension between water scarcity, ecological decline and agricultural demand. Snowpack in the Australian Alps continues declining. Desalination plants once framed as emergency assets increasingly resemble permanent infrastructure.

Scientists remain careful about predicting collapse. Australia retains immense adaptive capacity and institutional strength. Yet many researchers privately express frustration that public debate still treats climate change as a distant environmental issue rather than a restructuring force touching housing, labour, health and finance simultaneously.

What the country chooses to see

Near sunset the heat finally lifts from western Sydney. Children return to parks. Freight trains resume normal speed. The city exhales.

Australia still possesses choices that many nations do not. Vast renewable resources. Scientific expertise. Relative institutional stability. A population concentrated along coastlines rather than scattered across fragile interior regions.

But climate scientists increasingly speak about narrowing margins rather than open futures. Each fraction of warming carries consequences that compound through ecosystems, infrastructure and public health.

The danger is not only physical. It is political and psychological. Democracies struggle to sustain attention across slow emergencies unfolding unevenly over decades.

For years Australians imagined climate disruption as something approaching from elsewhere. Fire seasons, bleaching reefs and repeated floods have altered that perception. The continent is no longer waiting for climate change. It is negotiating with it daily.

References

1. CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, State of the Climate 2024
2. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Coral Bleaching Events
3. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Heatwaves and Health
4. Climate Council, Floods Fires and Climate Risk in Australia
5. Australian Government, Transforming Australia’s Energy System
6. IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report
7. Australian Government National Climate Risk Assessment
8. The Guardian, Fifth Mass Coral Bleaching Event in Eight Years
9. NASA Earth Observatory, Heat Stress on the Great Barrier Reef
10. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Climate Change and Australian Households

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