Brides of the sun: this is what climate change looks like

Everyone has their own idea about what climate change looks like. It's that polar bear adrift on its ice floe. It is an apocalyptic future of cities disappearing beneath the waves. Or it is just a big fat lie.

Agnes Mposwa,15, was married at the age of 14 and has a new baby.

Hardly anyone would imagine it is a young girl sitting in the doorway of a mud hut in a small African village, nursing her first baby as she watches her friends trot off to school.

But a new investigation suggests that girl, and millions more like her, are now the human face of climate change.

As rising temperatures and irregular rainfall throughout Africa have brought more drought and flooding, families once able to feed themselves have seen harvests fail year after year.

Eventually, many conclude that there is only one option left: their daughters have to go.

Read Gethin Chamberlain’s story in today”s Melbourne Age - “Brides of the sun: this is what climate change looks like.”

Sam Mitchell, epic solar cyclist, is Geographic Society's young adventurer 2017

A week into the most challenging solar-powered bike ride in the world, Sam Mitchell wasn't at all sure he'd make it.

Sam's bike in the red sand.

The relentless waves of red sand dunes were threatening to break his body and spirit.

Too often there was not enough power, either from his batteries and electric motors or his pedalling, to tow his trailer with its array of solar panels, its load of water containers, his tools, a month's supply of food and all the rest, over a dune.

Sam, aged 21 at the time and from Victoria's Gippsland, was required, again and again, to dismount, unhook his trailer and drag it by hand over a sand ridge, driving his body to exhaustion.

Read the story by Tony Wright in today’s Melbourne Age - “Sam Mitchell, epic solar cyclist, is Geographic Society's young adventurer 2017.”