On fire and hope and this time last year. Extracted from Living With the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa, a BWB Text anthology edited by Tom Doig. The city below us looked nothing like Melbourne. Wreathed in thick brown smoke, it resembled some post-apocalyptic ghost town, an End Times vision from a science fiction film. … Read more
JP Pomare is a Kiwi living in Melbourne, and a stingingly great writer. His new thriller In the Clearing is set in the Australian bush, with fire forever licking the horizon. We asked him to tell us about the view from over there. 1 Notes on burning When my family read my new novel In The … Read more
As Australia came to terms with the fact that climate change is fuelling its bushfires, deniers began a rearguard action centred around claims that arson, not climate, is to blame. Media analysts Timothy Graham and Tobias Keller look at how bots and troll accounts tried to shift the conversation. In the first week of 2020, … Read more
As the world’s leading coal exporter, Australia is burning down its own house, writes environmentalist Bill McKibben. This piece was originally published in The Nation as part of Covering Climate Now, a journalistic collaboration of 400 news outlets around the world to strengthen coverage of the climate story. One way to think about the devastating fires … Read more
Authenticity matters more than anything, writes Rosemary Williamson of the University of New England, an expert on leaders’ differing responses to catastrophic events. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been harshly criticised for being on holiday in Hawaii as the catastrophic bushfires were burning Australia. Since his return, he has visited stricken communities – most recently, … Read more
The horrors in Australia have had left many of us feeling complacent about New Zealand’s own response to climate change. But are we doing enough, asks Adam Currie. Aotearoa New Zealand is a leader in talking about climate change. We passed the Zero Carbon Act unanimously, have a prime minister deemed the “Anti-Trump”, and shamelessly … Read more
The scale of the horror in Australia right now can be hard for kids to process. Emily Writes explains what she’s been doing with her own sons to help them feel a little less afraid. My sister and niece and nephews live in Sydney and my brother, uncles, and grandmother live in Queensland. I was … Read more
Australia, your country is burning – the climate change emergency is here with you now, writes Michael Mann, a climate scientist visiting the country. This article originally appeared in The Guardian and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story. After years studying … Read more
How Australians affected, and concerned family and friends living overseas, can keep up with the latest developments on the fires ravaging the country. As I write this, fires are consuming huge swathes of Australia and conditions are expected to worsen. The situation is attracting global interest, and reporting has been extensive. But it isn’t always … Read more
A new poem by Sydney poet Catherine Vidler. apart from pink sun, sun pink from apart apart from pink sun, apart from all-dying grass, cloud-fuzz, brown-tinged, stretched virtual-zero, stones exposed, thirsty cracks, dry fountains, domestic courtyards aghast, this mix, dirty, dirtier, despair worn sharp-casual, this peculiar view, eerie light-lurking, apricot shapes … Read more
Leading physicist Richard Easther explains what’s been going on with the smoky orange skies above New Zealand. On New Year’s Day, social media in New Zealand was flooded with images of eerie orange skies above the South Island as the smoke from a continent-scale fire disaster crossed the Tasman Sea. Eerie. All we can hear … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Big changes coming for how schools are run, highly anticipated OCR decision coming today, and a clear-eyed look at the protests up Ōwairaka/Mt Albert. The government has set up a fight with a dangerous political constituency – highly involved parents at affluent schools. That’s putting it facetiously … Read more