Bushfires blister, rivers rampage, and tornadoes twist across America and Australia.
Fans flutter in futility at Bengaluru, India.
And creeping, wilful inaction is as deadly as the carbon in our skies.
Global Heating: Past the Point of Caution
According to scientists, the Earth has entered an “era of 1.5°C” – a threshold we were told to fear.
But fear has not translated to urgency.
Over the last 18 months, the planet’s average temperature has repeatedly breached this level.
Warnings, once future tense, are now lived reality.
Heatwaves strike with terrifying frequency and intensity, and the fires that follow are no longer seasonal—they are perennial.
In California, wildfire seasons have lengthened by over a month.
What used to be exceptional is now routine.
“Extreme fire weather” has become a climate norm. These fires are not natural disasters. They are political and economic decisions gone up in smoke.
The Unequal Cost of Global Warming
The truth is plain: this is not a shared burden.
The world’s richest 10%—those earning more than $AU75,000 a year a year—are responsible for 65% of emissions since 1990.
Meanwhile, the global poor live and die in the consequences.
In India, as cities swelter, women endure hours of unpaid labour in homes with little ventilation and no relief. Indoor heat, once overlooked, now emerges as a deadly threat.
South Australia's oceans tell the same story in a different dialect.
Over 200 marine species have perished in a single toxic algal bloom. A complex marine ecosystem, built over thousands of years, is collapsing in weeks.
This is not a warning. It is a requiem.
It’s Not Just the Climate
It’s not just forests or oceans.
Climate change is rewriting our very biology.
Scientists now link rising night-time temperatures to worsening sleep apnea.
For millions, heat is no longer just a daytime discomfort—it invades our sleep, our healing, our dreams.
The climate crisis is not about the environment alone.
It is about justice. About breath. About who gets to cool off and who doesn’t. About who is sheltered and who is sacrificed.
Where We Go From Here
This is not about despair—it is about truth.
The fires, the blooms, the deaths—these are messages.
Climate change is not coming. It is here, and it is naming our failures.
But we are not powerless.
We are complicit if we stay silent, but we are powerful if we act.
This is the moment for radical imagination, transformative policy, and global solidarity.
The Earth will survive us. The question is whether we will survive each other.
Enough is enough. We owe this moment the truth. And the courage to speak it. Loudly. Clearly. Together.
- Phys.org – The world has entered an ‘era of 1.5C’, scientists warn
- Axios – Extreme fire weather is worsening in California
- Euro Weekly News – The Rich and Global Warming
- Adelaide Now – Marine Die-Off in South Australia
- TIME – Sleep Apnea, Climate Change, and Rising Night Temperatures
- Climate change: mountain glaciers
- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
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