Some say the world will end in fire

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

![CDATA[The world is being churned. Ocean acidity is dissolving the shells of crustaceans, light is bringing darkness, and fires are creating cold yellow skies and changing the weather around them. What does it mean for climate change to intensify wild fires? And, in turn, what does it mean that intensifying fires cause their own weather patterns? It suggests that we are experiencing an assault upon the very elements of life. Until a bit over half a century ago, the disciplines of meteorology and climatology were based on the presumption that the climate was a stable phenomenon. Now, science tells us that the world could break the feared threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming over the next five years. In short, we are living through a time when prior worlds of meaning and practice are being overlaid and reconstituted by a new world of elemental perversions. This new world is created by us, including through insatiable commodity fetishism, overproduction of things, technoscientific intervention in nature, and (perversely) through a constantly renewed hope for material progress and unsustainably comfortable lives.]]
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationContinent Aflame: Responses to an Australian Catastrophe
EditorsPat Anderson, Sally Gardner, Paul James, Paul Komesaroff
Place of PublicationArmadale, Vic.
PublisherPalaver
Pages85-90
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)978064885510
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • climatic changes
  • end of the world

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