I don’t think I’m a doomist. But given the level of scientific agreement about where we are heading, it’s alarming that world events—terrible as they are—have pushed climate almost entirely off the news agenda.
Many regions now locked in conflict will, within a few decades, become functionally uninhabitable as we approach two degrees of warming. We’re already at one and a half. Two is no longer a warning sign in the distance; it’s on the horizon, and we are accelerating towards it—and well beyond. Where does it stop? It doesn’t, so long as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.
There’s a simple fact people rarely grasp: how thin the atmosphere actually is. If the Earth were the size of a soccer ball, the atmosphere would be less than a millimetre thick. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that you can’t use something that fragile as a dumping ground forever. Pumping around 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into it every year is bound to have consequences—and not pleasant ones.
Scientists are increasingly dismayed by the lack of attention this looming disaster is receiving. And personally, were it not for children, developing nations, and non-human life, I’d be tempted to say humanity deserves what’s coming. We’ve had a good fifty years to address the problem. Yet here we are, in 2026, with global emissions still rising.
We need to find ways to force climate back onto the political agenda.
There is some good news in Australia. A number of writers’ festivals are beginning to recognise that cancel culture—excluding voices that challenge contemporary group-think—is a double-edged sword. There’s a reason Voltaire wrote: « Je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerais ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire. »
“I detest what you write, but I would give my life so that you may continue to write.”
Many English translations soften this to “I disagree with what you write,” but disagreeing and detesting are not the same thing. Voltaire was making it clear that freedom of speech is not conditional on opinions staying within approved boundaries.
On hate-speech and anti-protest laws, movement is happening too. There is a demonstration tomorrow at Sydney Town Hall in support of the right to protest. Check whether it’s going ahead and details are on the Palestine Action Group Instagram and Facebook pages. Below is a joint statement from the Jewish Council and the Palestine Action Group.
Also, a group of Buddhist monks and a dog are on a 2300 mile “Walk for Peace” from Texas to Washington. There’s heaps of footage on social media, but I thought I’d just include here what one of the monks said to an assembled crowd of supporters.