The engineering and land management that enabled the state’s tremendous growth have left it more vulnerable to climate shocks — and those shocks are getting worse.

The low-lying country has centuries of experience managing water. Now climate change is threatening to flood it completely.

Australia is no stranger to bushfire. In 1994, in Sydney, I lost a house to one, and in 2002, just north of Sydney, I fought off another. But I’ve never experienced anything like the current fire season before. These bushfires have been burning since September, taking lives and property across the nation, but the worst came in late December, just as families were settling into their holidays. Our country is the world’s fifteenth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and at the back of the pack for climate action, as its emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to grow. Australians ...

The extinction crisis is acutely felt in Australia, where more than 1,800 species are federally listed as threatened.

As we glide along the path of our own destruction, this is how we normalise it – one tweet at a time.

Intentional blackouts by power companies were designed to prevent fires. Yet the strategy has not spared California from infernos caused by faulty infrastructure. It’s a case which sheds light on the equally untenable condition of capitalism applied to public administration.