Australia’s politicians will not be alive when climate impacts accelerate

If a plastics factory dumps toxic sludge into a river, we see, in days, the consequences. If a coal-fired power station in New South Wales dumps carbon emissions into the atmosphere, the impacts diffuse into a stupidly big sheet of roiling fluid film covering our planet, and the consequences manifest among a trillion hyperactive climate variables.

Our present politicians will be dead and gone
when climate change really begins to bite.

As you peer further into the future, the impacts of climate change get worse, and consequently, easier to detect on a personal, lived scale. They get so bad that I feel silly talking literally about them:

“In a six-degree-warmer world, the Earth’s ecosystem will boil with so many natural disasters that we will just start calling them “weather”: a constant swarm of out-of-control typhoons and tornadoes and floods and droughts, the planet assaulted regularly with climate events that not so long ago destroyed whole civilisations”

Read the story by Ketan Joshi - “Australia’s politicians will not be alive when climate impacts accelerate.”

When good animals make bad decisions

Life is full of choices and animals have to make them every day, such as where to live, where to feed, and which other animals to interact with. These decisions are often based on an animal’s perception of their surroundings – is it raining, am I too cold, is that a predator I smell? The consequences of getting this wrong could mean the difference between life and death.

The Striped Marsh Frog is a widespread species found throughout Victoria. 

But for some animals, the impact of the modern human environment on their habitat can cause confusion, leading to bad decisions and possible extinction.

Many insects, for example, are attracted to light reflected off water, but artificial surfaces like roads and the sides of buildings can mimic these natural reflective surfaces. The end result is that when the insects lay their eggs, they can’t hatch.

Similarly, some species of marine turtles use moonlight to navigate toward the ocean after hatching, but may instead head inland, attracted by streetlights along the shoreline.

Read the University of Melbourne Pursuit article - “When good animals make bad decisions.”