Australian Arts Confronts the Climate Crisis - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Australian artists are racing to green a sector menaced by the climate crisis they depict

Key Points

A national consortium called Creative Climate now unites organisations including Green Music Australia and CLIMARTE.[1] Green Music Australia has piloted a certification scheme to help venues measure and cut their emissions.[4] Academic reviews warn Australia's flagship cultural policy mentions climate change only once.[6] Researchers counted around twenty Australian music festivals disrupted by extreme weather across 2022 and 2023 alone.[9]

Wings of hand-stitched feathers rise above Melbourne's financial district each summer, carried by seven performers calling themselves Climate Guardians. 

Their theatrical protest outside major banks and fossil fuel financiers exemplifies a broader shift now reshaping Australian arts and culture. 

Musicians, painters, playwrights and choreographers across the country are confronting an emergency their own venues, tours and festivals increasingly suffer.

This investigation examines the strengths, weaknesses and roadblocks facing Australian arts organisations in their fight against climate change. 

It traces grassroots alliances, industry decarbonisation tools, structural policy gaps, financial constraints and the volatile weather now threatening festivals. Together these forces reveal a sector rich in creative ambition yet still searching for durable institutional support.

Grassroots Initiatives and Alliances

A national consortium named Creative Climate launched in June 2025 to unite the sector's climate response. Green Music Australia leads the alliance, funded across four years by Creative Australia. Member groups include A Climate for Art, Centre for Reworlding and pvi collective.^[1]

CLIMARTE anchors Australian arts and climate advocacy through festivals, forums and exhibitions. The organisation unites artists, scientists, academics and patrons around evidence-based climate science. It was established in 2010 to bridge the arts, humanities and scientific communities.^[2]

First Nations artists bring a distinct caring for Country perspective to environmental advocacy projects. Creative Climate's Planting in Naarm gathering paired Elders with community members for native revegetation work. The event, held at Melbourne's Federation Square, embedded cultural workshops alongside practical land care.^[1]

Performance collective ClimActs answers a different question through spectacle rather than policy submissions. Its Climate Guardians characters, winged figures inspired by guardian angels, formed in 2013 through Quit Coal activism. Public appearances outside fossil fuel financiers generate striking imagery that consistently attracts news coverage.^[3]

Industry Decarbonisation and Footprint Tools

Green Music Australia has piloted a Green Venue Certification scheme for live music venues. Backed by the New South Wales Government, the program assesses venues against sustainability criteria. A companion Green Venue Guide offers strategies covering energy, waste and procurement practices.^[4]

Touring productions now access dedicated carbon calculators to plan lower-impact schedules. Arts on Tour developed the Green Touring Toolkit alongside Arup's Circulate emissions calculator. The toolkit guides production design, venue partnerships and post-tour emissions measurement.^[5]

Critics argue voluntary measurement tools reach mainly organisations already committed to climate action. Smaller venues and independent artists often lack the resources to adopt formal certification. Uneven uptake leaves large sections of the sector outside any consistent emissions accounting.

Certification criteria target specific operational areas rather than sweeping structural change. Assessors examine energy use, waste management, water consumption and food and drink sourcing. Procurement practices round out the criteria reviewed under the certification framework.^[4]

Structural Barriers and Policy Gaps

Academic reviews describe Australia's artistic climate efforts as piecemeal and fragmented. Analysts point to scattered initiatives lacking coordinated national direction or dedicated funding. Without unifying policy, individual programs struggle to achieve lasting sector-wide impact.^[6]

Artwashing describes the practice of cultural institutions accepting funding from polluting industries. The term surfaced when advocates called on Adelaide's Museum of Economic Botany to sever ties with gas company Santos. Such arrangements let sponsors present a progressive image while continuing environmentally damaging operations.^[7]

The Australian Government's landmark cultural framework is named Revive, covering the years since 2023. A close reading found the word climate appears only once across the entire document. That single mention sits buried within a case study rather than core policy commitments.^[6]

Revive falls short of addressing systemic ecological transformation across the cultural sector. Its focus remains on workplace standards, First Nations representation and career sustainability. Climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for arts organisations remain largely absent from the framework.^[8]

Financial and Operational Constraints

Many arts bodies view sustainability planning as a burdensome expense rather than a strategic priority. Tight operating margins leave little room for dedicated environmental staff or specialist expertise. Advocates argue urgent investment in personnel and knowledge is essential for long-term sector survival.^[7]

Historical funding instability has limited non-profit arts groups' capacity to lead climate action. Short-term grants discourage multi-year sustainability planning across the community and independent arts sector. Organisations instead prioritise immediate programming needs over longer-term environmental infrastructure investment.^[6]

Prestige festivals often face a stark compromise between corporate funding and climate advocacy. Fossil fuel and mining sponsors remain significant contributors to major Australian cultural budgets. Accepting such funding risks accusations of artwashing even as programming budgets stay protected.^[7]

Smaller, independent arts organisations suffer most from the lack of baseline federal infrastructure. Without dedicated climate programs, regional and grassroots groups rely on ad hoc philanthropic support. This patchwork leaves emerging artists and community organisations most exposed to funding shocks.^[8]

Climate Risks and Festival Volatility

Extreme weather events increasingly force the cancellation of outdoor Australian arts events. Researchers counted around twenty Australian music festivals disrupted by extreme weather across 2022 and 2023 alone. Flooding, bushfire smoke and storms drove most of these cancellations and postponements.^[9]

Splendour in the Grass earned the nickname Splendour in the Mud after 2022 flooding cancelled its opening day. Reacting to such disruptions consumes organisers' energy that might otherwise build climate awareness campaigns. Operational survival increasingly overshadows the sector's broader advocacy ambitions during crisis periods.^[8]

Non-profit and community-run festivals face mounting financial pressure that pushes some toward closure. Falls Festival paused entirely in 2023 amid what organisers called a turbulent period. Rising costs for transport, accommodation and insurance compound the sector's existing fragility.^[10]

Insurance premiums are climbing sharply for arts organisations that host outdoor community events. Insurers now price policies against billions in extreme weather claims recorded across recent years. Reduced coverage and higher costs squeeze festival budgets already strained by low margins.^[10]

Australia's arts sector shows genuine creative energy in confronting the climate crisis. Grassroots alliances, certification schemes and Indigenous-led projects demonstrate what committed communities can achieve with limited resources. Artists, musicians and performers keep translating scientific warnings into public understanding and action.

Structural gaps persist despite this energy. National cultural policy remains largely silent on climate change, and funding instability discourages long-term sustainability planning. Festivals meanwhile face escalating financial and physical risk from extreme weather.

Closing these gaps requires coordinated government action beyond sector goodwill alone. Sustained investment and transparent policy commitment remain essential next steps. Genuine accountability from institutions and funders will determine whether Australian arts can adapt enough to match the crisis they portray.

References

1. New national arts-led climate action alliance announced . Details the launch of the Creative Climate consortium and its Planting in Naarm event.

2. Home - CLIMARTE . Outlines CLIMARTE's founding mission uniting the arts, humanities and sciences around climate action.

3. Our History - ClimActs . Recounts the 2013 founding of the Climate Guardians performance collective.

4. Green Music Australia launch program to boost sustainability of live music venues . Describes the Green Venue Certification pilot and its assessment criteria.

5. Green Touring Toolkit - Arts on Tour . Explains the toolkit and Circulate emissions calculator for touring productions.

6. Culture and climate: A dangerous gap in policy and practice . Analyses the near-total absence of climate change from the Revive cultural policy.

7. National Cultural Policy revives unfamiliar hope . Discusses artwashing, the Museum of Economic Botany dispute and calls for sustainability investment.

8. Climate change is transforming Australia's cultural life . Examines festival cancellations and Revive's silence on systemic climate adaptation.

9. Australian music festivals are increasingly affected by climate change . Reports research counting festival cancellations linked to extreme weather in 2022 and 2023.

10. The climate crisis is crushing Australian festivals . Details the insurance crisis and financial pressures behind festival closures such as Falls Festival.

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Another warning shot from Antarctica: the “Doomsday Glacier” is losing its last shield – 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

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is almost the size of Victoria, and more than two kilometres thick in places. It holds enough land-based ice to raise global sea levels by around 65 centimetres when fully melted. 

 

Now scientists believe its remaining eastern ice shelf - the floating extension that protects the glacier’s front - could break apart as early as this year.

“The last bit of ice shelf in front of the glacier is poised to disintegrate,” British Antarctic Survey scientist Robert Larter ⁠told Live Science.

This doesn’t mean the entire glacier will collapse this year, but it’s still a very serious warning. The glacier’s ice shelf is already floating, so its breakup will add little water directly to the ocean. The danger is what comes afterwards. Because an ice shelf acts like a brace for the glacier, restraining the immense mass of land-based ice behind it. As it weakens and disappears, the glacier behind it can flow more rapidly into the sea.

Satellite observations show large cracks have been spreading across the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf since 2016. Full-depth rifts have appeared. And the shelf is increasingly losing contact with the seabed ridge that has been holding it in place - a ⁠peer-reviewed study from Cambridge University described this as the shelf’s “last act”.

The deeper danger

Thwaites is especially vulnerable because much of it sits on bedrock below sea level.

Warm, salty ocean water is reaching underneath the glacier and melting it from below. Tides are already pumping seawater as far as 10 kilometres beneath the grounded ice. And worse, much of the bedrock slopes downwards further inland. As the glacier retreats, thicker ice will be pushed to deeper water, encouraging still more melting and retreat. Scientists call this ‘marine ice-sheet instability’.

While the ⁠International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration concluded that complete disintegration of the glacier is unlikely during the next few decades, its retreat will definitely continue and accelerate. A 2026 modelling study found that Thwaites’ rate of ice loss has increased more than fivefold since the 1990s. By the 2060s, it could be losing around 180 to 200 billion tonnes of ice each year.

The eventual loss of Thwaites will also contribute to the destabilisation of surrounding West Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise seas by approximately 3.3 metres. These changes will unfold over more than our lifetimes. But ice sheets have long memories. Tipping points crossed now will commit Earth to rising seas for centuries to come.

What does this mean for Australia?

Global sea levels have already risen by more than 22 centimetres since 1900. And the rate of rise has accelerated from about 1.5 centimetres per decade during the twentieth century to nearly four centimetres per decade since 1993, according to the ⁠BOM and CSIRO.

Higher seas give every king tide, storm surge, east coast low and tropical cyclone a higher launching pad. Coastal erosion accelerates. Salt enters wetlands and groundwater. Homes, roads, ports and sewage systems become more vulnerable. Properties don’t have to be permanently underwater to become uninsurable, unmortgageable or effectively unsellable.

Australia’s ⁠National Climate Risk Assessment assesses that sea-level rises will place an additional 1.5 million Australians in high-risk coastal areas by 2050.

The consequences for low-lying Pacific nations and Torres Strait Islanders are more existential. Rising seas already threaten freshwater, food production, homes, cultural sites and the habitability of entire islands. First Nations coastal Country and irreplaceable cultural heritage will also be inundated and eroded.

Photo of the Thwaites Glacier from Live Science.

The bad news is that breakup of the Thwaites ice shelf is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean the fate of the entire glacier is fixed. Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters. Every centimetre of avoided sea-level rise matters. Every additional decade available for communities to prepare matters.

Thwaites is showing us what a climate tipping process looks like: it’s not like a spectacular Hollywood disaster, it’s the progressive loss of structures that hold a vast natural system together. And Australia can’t credibly acknowledge the danger while continuing to approve new coal and gas projects that will operate for decades. 

Gregory Andrews Climate Change Articles

• The Graph That Should Be Front-Page News
• Beginning of the End for Fossil-Fuelled Cars
• Ignoring the Warning Light
• Australia’s Flagship Climate Policy Is Failing to Cut Emissions
• Winter's Here, The Snowfields Are Open, But There's No Snow
• Worried About Climate Collapse? Here's Ten Things You Can Actually Do
• Fossil Fuel Fascism: When a Dying Industry Tries to Take Democracy With It
• Climate Policy Counts Dollars and Tonnes. What if We Counted the Dead?
• The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis
• 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 Photo 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

Australia's Sharks are Shifting South on Warming Seas, and so Is the Risk - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Warming seas are pushing predatory sharks into new Australian waters

Key Points

The East Australian Current's acceleration is pushing tropical sharks hundreds of kilometres south.[1] Bull sharks now hold favourable habitat off New South Wales for months longer than in the past.[5] Rising metabolic demands are driving sharks to forage more aggressively near shore.[6] New South Wales has expanded drone and SMART drumline technology to adapt to shifting shark presence.[9]

Ballina surfer Grace Owens felt the shift long before scientists confirmed it publicly. 

Warmer water lingered off the Northern Rivers coastline into late April, weeks past its usual seasonal retreat. 

Bull sharks stayed in the lineup long after the summer holiday crowds had already left, unsettling longtime locals.

Her account matches a wider pattern now documented by marine scientists along the southeastern coast. 

Climate change is measurably reshaping shark distribution, seasonal timing and hunting behaviour across eastern Australia. 

Researchers say rising human encounters are becoming an unavoidable consequence, one carrying implications for governance and coastal communities.

Ocean Warming and the Southward Push

The East Australian Current is accelerating steadily under sustained global warming pressures each decade. It pushes warmer tropical water further south along the continental shelf, reshaping long standing thermal boundaries. Tropical shark species are following this strengthening marine highway into historically cooler temperate waters.^[1]

Bull sharks and tiger sharks increasingly hold established territory in waters near Sydney and southern New South Wales. Populations once confined largely to subtropical Queensland waters now persist through entire winter seasons. Researchers link this behavioural shift directly to the accelerating strength of the warming current.^[2]

White shark nurseries face a parallel transformation as coastal waters continue warming rapidly each decade. The long established Port Stephens nursery may lose significant thermal suitability within coming decades. Victorian waters near Corner Inlet and the Twofold Shelf could gain new suitability instead.^[3]

CSIRO tagging studies confirm juvenile white sharks consistently favour specific coastal travel corridors each year. These corridors run along the continental shelf between Port Stephens and eastern Victoria, tracing water depths favoured by young sharks. Shifting ocean temperatures could redraw these long established corridors within a single generation.^[4]

Shifting Seasons and Migration Timing

Warming waters are steadily extending bull shark residency along the entire southeastern Australian coast. Favourable temperatures above twenty two degrees now persist across New South Wales for months longer than before. Researchers predict three additional months of suitable habitat availability by the year 2030.^[1]

Winter migration triggers are steadily weakening as southern coastal waters retain summer heat longer each year. Sharks that once reliably fled north each autumn are now lingering later into the season. Acoustic tracking networks confirm many individuals are delaying their traditional equatorward journeys considerably.^[5]

Phenological mismatches are emerging steadily between resident sharks and their traditional migratory prey species. Baitfish schools now arrive earlier in the season than established shark migration patterns anticipate, disrupting long standing ecological timing. This growing timing gap forces predators to adjust their foraging strategies rapidly and unpredictably.^[5]

Some historically transient shark species may now overwinter permanently within southeastern estuaries and sheltered inlets. Warmer estuarine refuges reduce the biological incentive for undertaking long distance seasonal travel altogether. Extended year round residency raises the statistical odds of encounters with recreational water users.^[5]

Behavioural and Foraging Adaptations

Rising ocean temperatures accelerate metabolic rates significantly among ectothermic, cold blooded shark species. Faster metabolism forces sharks to hunt more frequently and more aggressively within busy coastal zones. Increased foraging frequency consistently brings hungry predators closer to popular swimming beaches during warmer months.^[6]

Baitfish, tuna and marine mammal populations are steadily relocating as coastal waters continue warming. Sharks are tracking these moving food sources ever closer toward the immediate coastline, altering long established hunting grounds. Acoustic monitoring networks now reveal predators consistently shadowing displaced prey into shallow bays.^[5]

Heavy rainfall events are steadily reshaping how juvenile bull sharks utilise southeastern river systems and estuaries. Flooded waterways displace prey species into unfamiliar shallow channels near heavily populated residential areas. Nutrient rich runoff draws hungry baitfish into these channels, and bull sharks follow closely behind.^[7]

Marine heatwaves trigger acute, short term behavioural shifts among coastal apex predators along both major coastlines. Warm water species linger longer while established resident species retreat toward cooler southern refuges. Tasmanian waters increasingly host warm water visitors once confined almost entirely to mainland shores.^[8]

Factors Driving Human Encounters

Peak seasonal shark presence increasingly overlaps directly with crowded holiday beach seasons across the southeast. Warmer waters draw sharks progressively south during the very same extended months families gather to swim. This growing overlap concentrates encounter risk during the busiest recreational periods of the year.^[7]

Extreme weather events and shifting baitfish schools are steadily pulling large sharks toward the immediate shoreline. Record breaking rainfall has repeatedly flushed sewage and organic debris into nearby coastal waters. This nutrient surge attracts baitfish, and predators inevitably follow them into busy surf zones.^[7]

Sharks are spending progressively longer seasons within coastal estuaries, harbours and sheltered tidal inlets. These same busy waterways host swimmers, paddlers and recreational anglers throughout the warmer summer months. Extended seasonal overlap steadily raises the statistical chance of unexpected encounters occurring nearby.^[5]

Flooding events regularly cloud coastal waters with sediment, silt and turbid agricultural runoff. Reduced underwater visibility makes it considerably harder for sharks to correctly identify people nearby in the surf. Analysts increasingly consider this a genuine and measurable contributor toward accidental predatory encounters.^[7]

Ecological and Governance Implications

Cold water adapted and warm water adapted apex predators increasingly share the very same coastal range. This growing overlap intensifies direct competition for already dwindling temperate marine prey resources. Vulnerable cool water shark and ray species now face displacement toward marginal, less productive habitat further out from shore.^[2]

New South Wales has substantially expanded drone patrols and SMART drumline coverage in direct response. Over three hundred drumlines now operate daily across nineteen separate local government areas. Officials describe this as the largest and most comprehensive shark mitigation program anywhere in the world.^[9]

Commercial and recreational fisheries face growing uncertainty as target species shift steadily beyond historical management boundaries. Quota systems built around outdated historical ranges risk becoming rapidly and expensively misaligned with reality. Adaptive, climate informed management remains essential for both shark conservation and fishing industry stability.^[2]

Shark driven trophic cascades help actively protect valuable kelp forests from destructive sea urchin overgrazing. Intensifying marine heatwaves threaten this delicate ecological balance across southern Australian reef systems, from Tasmania to Victoria. Losing apex predators from these systems could rapidly accelerate the collapse of critical kelp habitat.^[10]

Climate change is fundamentally reshaping shark ecology along Australia's entire southeastern seaboard. Warmer currents, altered breeding seasons and shifting prey distributions are converging simultaneously across the region. The consequences extend across marine ecosystems, coastal fisheries and everyday public safety.

Government agencies have expanded surveillance, tagging and drone technology considerably in response to these changes. Yet management frameworks still remain largely reactive rather than genuinely anticipatory of future shifts. Long term coastal planning must treat this as permanent structural change rather than a passing seasonal anomaly.

Accountability requires transparent data collection and sustained investment extending well beyond single summer funding cycles. Coastal communities deserve dedicated funding tied directly to credible long term climate projections and evidence. Australia's shark management system must evolve as quickly and deliberately as the ocean around it.

References

1. Predicting changes in distribution of a large coastal shark in the face of the strengthening East Australian Current. Marine Ecology Progress Series modelling shows bull sharks gaining months of suitable NSW habitat as the current strengthens.

2. Global warming to reshape Australian shark and ray populations and raise extinction risk. Australian Marine Conservation Society outlines how a strengthening current pushes tropical species south into competition with temperate residents.

3. Seasonal changes in the habitat suitability of immature white sharks driven by ocean warming. ICES Journal of Marine Science research projects shifting suitability between the Stockton and Twofold Shelf white shark nurseries.

4. White shark research findings. CSIRO tagging identifies juvenile white shark nursery corridors along the New South Wales and Victorian coastlines.

5. Ocean warming increases residency at summering grounds for migrating bull sharks. Science of the Total Environment documents extended bull shark residency linked to accelerated warming in southeastern Australia.

6. Future Distribution of Suitable Habitat for Pelagic Sharks in Australia Under Climate Change Models. Frontiers in Marine Science reviews evidence that elevated temperatures raise shark metabolic and foraging demands.

7. Sharks aren't turning on us, so what's behind the recent spate of attacks. Euronews reports how flooding, runoff and displaced baitfish drew bull sharks toward populated New South Wales beaches.

8. Marine Heatwaves. Fishing Tasmania details how intensifying marine heatwaves are drawing warm water species further into Tasmanian waters.

9. Current Program. The NSW Government describes the Shark Management Program, including SMART drumlines, drones and listening stations.

10. Marine Protected Areas That Preserve Trophic Cascades Promote Resilience of Kelp Forests to Marine Heatwaves. This peer reviewed study shows predator driven trophic cascades help kelp forests withstand marine heatwave disturbance.

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Global warming already causing crop losses of over $20 billion a year - New Scientist

New Scientist - Michael Le Page

Climate change is already having a big impact on crop yields, and the
subsequent financial losses will continue to rise as the world keeps warming

The economies of countries where many people work in farming will be hit the hardest. Imago/Alamy

Global warming-fuelled heat and drought is already hitting yields of maize, wheat and soybeans to the tune of $20 billion a year, a study has estimated. 

This could rise eightfold, to more than $160 billion by 2100, unless we slash emissions.

While the financial losses will be greatest for big producers such as the US, the impacts will be felt most in the lowest-income countries, where the majority of the population works in farming, says Yi Ling Hwong at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. “If you look at the least-developed countries in Africa, the impact is much bigger.” 

This could lead to social unrest and increased migration, she warns.

There is great uncertainty about these kinds of projections, not least because so much depends on how farmers respond and adapt to a continually changing climate, for instance, by switching to different crops or adopting irrigation where it is possible. 

In fact, the whole point of this study is to raise awareness and encourage adaptation, to help ensure these projections turn out to be overestimates, says team member Kai Kornhuber, also at IIASA. “This is the entire mission of climate scientists: we make these cases for people to react, so our projections turn out to be wrong.”

The researchers started by gathering data on the yields per country of maize, wheat and soya from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Next, they took past climate data and calculated the drought level, using a standard approach that estimates soil moisture levels from rainfall and evaporation levels.

Past heat extremes and drought levels were then compared with the yields from 1974 to 2004 to estimate the impact of heat and drought. They then used these statistical correlations to estimate crop losses from 2007 to 2019. 

Their results suggest that increases in heat extremes and drought have caused a 3.5 per cent decline in yields relative to the 1974 to 2004 baseline. “Three per cent or so might not sound like much, but this is a major impact [on] the global food market, which regionally can trigger a severe crisis,” says Kornhuber.

The researchers then calculated the economic losses, based on FAO data showing how much farmers would have been paid for their produce at the time. Finally, they used the same approach to project future losses in several different emissions scenarios, assuming that some adaptation takes place.

In a high-emissions scenario, known as SSP3-7.0, global yields will fall by around 35 per cent by 2100, with annual losses rising to more than $161 billion. “The production losses caused by heat and drought are around 855 million tonnes a year,” says Hwong, who presented the results at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna in May. “I think that is equivalent to what around 2 billion people consume over a year.”

This could be an underestimate of the full impact of climate change for a number of reasons: it’s just three crops, and it doesn’t include flood, storm or rain damage, or the possibility that shortages could lead to big price increases, as is already happening with some other crops such as coffee and cacao.

Jonas Jägermeyr at Columbia University in New York says the study’s reliance on the statistical relationships between yield losses and extreme heat and drought could result in it overestimating the impacts by 2100. “Statistical yield models are great for explaining what’s happening now, and in the near past [or] future, but they are inherently unreliable when pushed into vastly different environmental regimes, such as high-emission climate scenarios by the end of the century.” 

Computer models of how plants are affected by rising CO2 and temperatures are better for projecting what will happen by the end of the century, he says.

Karine Chenu at the University of Queensland, Australia, makes the same point. “Although models are not perfect, they are better suited for this type of extrapolation.” 

However, her team recently released a study, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, showing that two widely used models for wheat make large errors and are especially poor at forecasting the combined effects of extreme heat and drought.

But Kornhuber has defended his team’s use of statistical methods. “The models are remarkable tools, but some of the validation papers have suggested that they might not be super responsive to extremes,” he says. “In our project, extremes were the main focus, so we decided to establish these relationships directly through statistics.”

Links

• EGU General Assembly 2026 DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8148 
• The jet stream may be starting to shift in response to climate change  
• A key solution to climate change isn't happening – and that's good 
• Removing CO2 from the atmosphere by capturing the carbon from burning biomass is supposed to save the planet, but it looks like the flagship project will never happen

Growing Up In The Heat: The Hidden Climate Crisis Shaping Australian Childhoods - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Australian children are already living inside a 
climate emergency adults still describe as future risk

Key Points

Australian children increasingly experience climate harm that remains largely peripheral in national policy debates 1 Extreme heat is emerging as a major threat to pregnancy, childhood health, and educational outcomes 2 Bushfire smoke exposure may shape respiratory health across an entire generation 3 Repeated disasters are producing long-term psychological and social consequences for young Australians 4 Climate disruption increasingly deepens existing inequality across housing, health, and education 5 Governments continue evaluating climate policy without systematically measuring children's future losses 6

By mid-morning the asphalt outside the school playground had begun to soften.

Teachers ushered students indoors before lunch. Metal handrails burned small palms. A Year 4 teacher lowered blinds against the glare while ageing air-conditioners struggled through another day above 40 degrees.

Few children understood the atmospheric forces driving the heat. Most understood the sensation.

The headache. The fatigue. The sudden stillness that settles over a school when outdoor play becomes unsafe.

Australia's climate debate still revolves around emissions targets, energy markets and infrastructure investment. Children rarely occupy the centre of the frame.

Yet they are among the people most exposed to its consequences.

The Missing Subject In Climate Policy

One of the most striking features of Australia's climate debate is not what appears in policy documents. It is who disappears from them.

Government climate assessments routinely calculate economic losses, infrastructure damage and agricultural risk. Far fewer systematically track childhood exposure to heat, smoke, educational disruption or psychological trauma.

UNICEF Australia estimates around 1.4 million Australian children experience a climate disaster or extreme weather event during an average year.¹

That figure is extraordinary. If 1.4 million children experienced a comparable infectious disease outbreak each year, the issue would dominate cabinet meetings and nightly news bulletins.

Instead climate impacts arrive incrementally. A flooded school here. Weeks of smoke there. A cancelled sporting season. Another heatwave.

The injuries accumulate quietly across childhood.

Before Birth

Some climate effects begin before children take their first breath.

International and Australian research increasingly links prolonged heat exposure during pregnancy to higher risks of premature birth, low birth weight and pregnancy complications.²

Obstetricians describe heat as a physiological stressor. Maternal dehydration, cardiovascular strain and reduced placental function can affect fetal development.

The burden is unlikely to fall evenly.

Women in poorly insulated housing, regional communities and low-income households often face greater exposure. Air-conditioning remains one of Australia's most effective heat adaptation tools. It is also becoming more expensive to run.

Public health systems monitor birth outcomes. Far fewer programmes systematically track climate-linked pregnancy risks.

The result is a growing blind spot.

Children may be entering the world already shaped by environmental conditions largely absent from climate planning.

The Bodies Of Children Respond Differently

Children regulate temperature less efficiently than adults.

They sweat differently. They dehydrate more quickly. Infants possess particularly limited capacity to cool themselves during extreme heat.

Those physiological realities collide with a built environment designed for another climate.

Many Australian schools were constructed before current heat extremes became common. Portable classrooms often become especially difficult during prolonged heatwaves.

Teachers across western Sydney, northern Victoria and regional Queensland increasingly report reduced concentration, behavioural difficulties and exhaustion during extreme heat events.²

Heat affects sleep. Poor sleep affects memory. Learning losses emerge gradually.

No dramatic moment signals the damage.

A child simply absorbs less information across hundreds of overheated school days.

The Smoke Years

During Black Summer the air itself became a public health emergency.

Smoke drifted across eastern Australia for months. Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne recorded pollution levels that health experts described as unprecedented.³

Around 10 million Australians were exposed to hazardous bushfire smoke during the crisis.⁷

Children occupied a particularly vulnerable position.

Their lungs were still developing. Their respiratory rates were higher than adults. Many spent weeks breathing polluted air despite school closures and public health warnings.

Researchers continue investigating the long-term consequences. Evidence already suggests repeated smoke exposure may worsen respiratory illness and contribute to chronic health problems across childhood.⁸

The smoke infiltrated ordinary life.

Children stopped playing outdoors. Sports carnivals disappeared. Families sealed windows with tape. Air purifiers sold out across major cities.

The experience left marks beyond lung tissue.

Growing Up Inside Repeated Disaster

Psychologists increasingly distinguish climate anxiety from conventional anxiety disorders.

The fear is not always irrational. Often it reflects accurate assessment.

A teenager who has experienced bushfires, floods and record heatwaves may not imagine future disruption. They have already lived through it.

Research worldwide shows climate disasters can contribute to post-traumatic stress, depression and prolonged psychological distress among children and adolescents.⁴

Australian clinicians report similar concerns after Black Summer and the catastrophic floods that followed.

Trauma rarely ends when floodwaters recede.

Children return to damaged schools. Parents confront insurance disputes. Communities fracture under financial strain.

Years later some young people still describe anxiety during hot windy afternoons.

The weather becomes a trigger.

The Education System Under Climate Stress

Layla Wang was preparing for her final years of schooling when climate disasters repeatedly interrupted education in the New South Wales South Coast region.

Bushfires arrived first. Floods followed later.⁹

Her experience is becoming less unusual.

School closures linked to bushfires, floods and extreme heat increasingly affect students across regional Australia.

The educational consequences extend beyond missed days.

Disrupted learning can affect examination performance, school completion rates and eventually lifetime earnings. Deloitte modelling for UNICEF Australia projects substantial long-term economic losses associated with disaster-related educational disruption among children and young people.⁶

Regional students often face greater vulnerability because climate hazards and infrastructure limitations intersect.

The same storm that damages homes may also isolate schools and disrupt internet access.

Climate Change As An Inequality Multiplier

Climate impacts rarely arrive on equal terms.

A child sleeping in an insulated home with solar panels experiences heat differently from a child in overcrowded housing with limited cooling.

Housing quality increasingly functions as a health determinant.

Indigenous communities, remote settlements and lower-income households frequently confront greater exposure to climate hazards while possessing fewer resources for recovery.⁵

Children with disabilities face additional challenges during evacuations, service disruptions and prolonged emergencies.

Climate change often amplifies disadvantages already present.

The danger is not merely immediate harm.

Repeated disruption can harden inequality across generations, affecting educational achievement, health outcomes and future economic opportunity.

The Economics Of A Lost Childhood

Australian climate policy still evaluates many decisions through economic frameworks built around present-day costs.

Children complicate that accounting.

How should governments value diminished lung capacity at age eight, interrupted schooling at fourteen or chronic anxiety carried into adulthood?

Deloitte estimates climate-related disasters already impose billions of dollars in annual costs on Australian children and young people, with future costs expected to rise significantly under higher warming scenarios.⁶

Many losses remain difficult to quantify.

No spreadsheet easily captures the value of a stable childhood.

Yet governments make implicit calculations every time climate risks are discounted against short-term economic priorities.

Future burdens are real even when they remain absent from budget papers.

What Accountability Would Look Like

Australian governments have received warnings about climate risks to children for years.

Medical colleges, public health researchers, disaster experts and international agencies have repeatedly identified young people as one of the most vulnerable populations.¹⁰

The deeper question concerns political responsibility.

Should major fossil fuel projects require formal assessments of impacts on future generations?

Should climate adaptation funding be evaluated according to child wellbeing rather than infrastructure replacement alone?

Should governments publish annual indicators measuring heat exposure, disaster displacement, smoke exposure and climate-related mental health among children?

Those proposals remain politically contested.

Yet they emerge from a simple observation.

Children will inhabit the consequences of today's climate decisions longer than anyone making them.

Conclusion

The most unsettling aspect of climate change in Australia may not be the fires, floods or heatwaves themselves.

It may be the normalisation of childhood exposure to them.

A generation is growing up beneath conditions that would have seemed exceptional only a few decades ago. Dangerous heat arrives more often. Smoke seasons last longer. Extreme weather intrudes repeatedly into education, housing and health.

Most children adapt because children usually do. They attend school after disasters. They return to sporting fields when the smoke clears. They absorb new realities with unsettling speed.

Adaptation, however, should not be mistaken for protection.

The central question facing Australia is no longer whether climate change affects children. Evidence already answers that.

The question is whether governments are willing to place childhood wellbeing at the centre of climate policy rather than treating it as a secondary consequence.

Future generations will inherit the climate adults create. The more difficult judgement may concern what adults chose to ignore while creating it.

References

1. UNICEF Australia, Children and Climate Disaster Exposure
2. Climate Council, Climate Change And Health Research
3. University of Canberra, Bushfires Health Protection And Risk Communication
4. UNICEF, Climate Crisis And Children's Mental Health
5. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia’s Health
6. Deloitte Australia, The Economic And Social Impact Of Disasters On Children And Young People
7. HEAL Research Centre, Black Summer Smoke Exposure Analysis
8. Bushfire Smoke And Children’s Health, International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health
9. The Guardian, Educational Disruption And Climate Disasters
10. Royal Australasian College Of Physicians, Climate Change And Child Health

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Turning Waste Into Wealth - 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)

Every year the world tips US$30 trillion’s worth of valuable materials into its garbage tips, waterways, the atmosphere, and other dumping grounds. 

Put another way, every person on Earth would be about $4000 a year better off if we reused stuff and reduced losses – instead of chucking it all away.

That’s the finding of the 2026 Circularity Gap report, a regular study of humanity’s colossal use and waste of materials. The gap it refers to is the difference between the avoidable losses incurred by our sloppy, lazy, throwaway society, and the huge benefits we can reap by eliminating losses and reusing materials.

More importantly, it is one of the few readily attainable goals that can save our society from collapse and our grandchildren from obliteration.

As discussed in the recent piece on population, the Earth is currently carrying 3 to 4 times more people than it can support in the long run. We have 8.3 billion people, heading for 11-12 billion by the latter part of the 21^st century. And according to scientific experts, the Earth can carry only 2.5 billion at todays levels of material consumption.

The selfish and the thoughtless frequently object that society (meaning they) will never agree to the 70 per cent cut in its material demands which is necessary for the preservation of civilisation. Maybe not – but closing the ‘circularity gap’ would almost eliminate the need for new materials to be extracted, by simply using as close to 100% of the old ones as we can get. Lowering our population will do the rest.

The bottom line is this: humanity currently consumes 105 billion tonnes of materials it has extracted from the Earth system every year, in the form of food, fibre, energy, minerals, timber and building materials. This has grown from 28 billion tonnes in 1972, meaning that our material demand has increased by 275% in the same time it took the population to grow by 115%. In resource terms, today’s humans are three times greedier than their grandparents.

However, the maximum the Earth can sustain renewably, according to the Global Footprint Network and scientific analysts, is the extraction of 60 billion tonnes of materials annually.

At present rates human material consumption is forecast to hit 160 billion tonnes by the 2060s – 100 billion tonnes more than the Earth can support. And we will waste around 150 billion tonnes of it.

Reduced to the individual, the average person now consumes 12 tonnes of materials a year (far more in rich countries), rising to 18 tonnes in the 2060s. Yet the Earth can sustain only 7 tonnes per person.

The global resource crisis is most evident in the growing water shortages, which now afflict half of Earth’s citizens and most of our megacities. But global shortages of food, timber, clean air and key strategic minerals are not far away.

The latest Circularity Gap report, however, accentuates not so much the crisis – as the opportunity. A thirty trillion dollar (€25tn) opportunity, from eliminating unnecessary losses in all productive areas of the economy, especially in food, energy, processing, manufacturing, transport and construction.

The report states “This means that for every €3 of economic value created globally, around €1 is lost due to linear material use. These losses are avoidable and represent a significant opportunity for circularity to enhance value recovery and long-term value retention across economies.”

Unfortunately, current economic metrics – like GDP – do not take account of these losses, it warns. In other words, we need a more ecologically-literate form of economics to base our decisions on.

The report cautions that realising our lost $30 trillion isn’t just about adopting recycling – it’s also very much about reducing resource extraction, improving efficiency, harvesting production waste and maximising resource value all along the chain.

“By retaining materials at higher utility and preventing waste and underutilisation, economies can capture substantial economic gains while reducing environmental pressures, supply risks, and social externalities embedded in linear practices.”

Figure 1. Areas of the value chain where the greatest gains can be made from eliminating waste.
Source CGR 2026.

The diagram above shows that every year $12 trillion is lost into rubbish dumps worldwide – perfectly reusable metals, plastics, wood, ceramics, nutrients and other products thrown away forever.

The energy sector is close behind, with around $10 trillion in lost energy through sloppy mining practices, gas flares, leaks, urban grids and inefficient machinery such as the internal combustion engine. The average car owner is unaware that a quarter to a third or all the fuel they put into their vehicle is wasted, mostly in the form of heat.

Poor maintenance of fixed infrastructure costs society another $6 trillion a year, plus $1 trillion lost in refining and manufacturing processes.

Most shocking is the loss of food in storage, transport, retail, and final consumption., which amounts to $800 billion every year. In a world with 700 million hungry people, we waste enough food to feed 2-3 billion.

It is time to recognise our throwaway society, not just as obscenely wasteful – but as a bleak and selfish chapter in the human story that casually threw away the lives of its children and grandchildren in the civilisational collapse which it precipitated.

People are starting to recognise the havoc which global heating, nuclear war and even environmental collapse can cause to humanity’s future chances of survival. But they remain largely ignorant or indifferent to the lasting damage that resource failure can inflict.

Besides freshwater, major life-sustaining resources now slipping into critical scarcity include topsoil (for growing crops), forest products, fish and clean air. Global heating and continued population growth will amplify all these shortages.

Resource failure is, with strong reason, one of the ten catastrophic threats that are currently combining to menace the future of civilisation and the human species. Also, it is getting worse: the volume of materials recycled has actually fallen from 8.6 to 6.9% in the past ten years. Meaning we waste 93% of everything we now extract from the Earth.

Yet the solution - closing the ‘circularity gap’ - is both affordable and readily achievable. There is nothing that prevents us from ending waste – and thirty trillion darn good reasons to do so.

The human jawbone is the most destructive implement on the planet. Every day, yours alone chews through 12 kilos of topsoil, 950 litres of water, 1.6 litres of fuel and 1g of increasingly toxic pesticides while producing 4.9 kilos of carbon emissions. Yet all of this colossal waste could be reversed simply by adopting ‘renewable food’. And nobody in the world ever need go hungry again.

In summary, the rewards for ending losses and recycling our waste are far, far greater than the discovery of any major new technology. For instance, it is worth 75 times the current global value of the AI industry. It is worth more than three times the value of the global oil industry. It is worth almost forty times the wealth of Elon Musk. It is equivalent to one quarter of the total value of the world economy ($126tr).

Yet this is an industry that hardly exists in the eyes of our wasteful world. An industry few billionaires have yet seen fit to invest in. An industry on which the very future of humanity, on our finite Earth, depends for survival.

Retrieving those vast losses does not require any new alchemy. The technologies to do it already exist - and many have done for decades. The glass and aluminium industries have shown the way. Plastics and rare metals are catching up. Smart companies are already scenting huge profits.

So let’s start turning all that waste into real wealth.

Julian Cribb Articles

• 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