Australia’s a hot spot for climate change politics, climate change science, and climate change suffering

Nature News “Global warming tops the agenda as climate brings down a third Australian prime minister”

As this article makes clear, Australia is an interesting country. It’s not “ground-zero” for climate change per se, but compared to other developed countries it is suffering from climate change in rather profound ways. Some of this suffering relates to the biological heritage of the country (loss of the Great Barrier Coral Reef), while some is socioeconomic (persistant drought and the concomitant loss of agricultural productivity).

But Australia does have something in common with its industrial peers: it is a country highly-dependent on fossil fuels.

Apparently, this economic dependence is still tipping the political scale, as now three Prime Ministers have failed to push across a meaningful climate action plan. One wonders how much more suffering everyday Australians will have to endure before their politicians manage to take some action.