Did you see this image over the past week? If you haven’t, and don’t know what it is, this is the Bureau of Meterology’s forecasting map for last Tuesday. Last week, temperatures in Australia got so hot that the Bureau had to add another colour to the map – the strange light purple in the middle of South Australia.
In an odd way this looks like some strange art. In a way it is beautiful – the different colours merging together to creating this apex in the middle of the country.
Yet, when you started to look a little deeper, and think about what this represents, it will probably take your breath away.
This map, this art, doesn’t just represent one hot day in Australia. It represents so much more than that. This is, literally, an almost artistic representation of everything we are doing to our planet. This is a representation of the fact that we have now gotten to the point where we are literally changing the climate map. Our actions, and our actions alone, are literally changing the shape of our climate – WE are causing more extreme weather, sea level rises, heatwaves. It’s us.
No matter which way you look at it, this map is a big f#$king deal.
Yet, despite everything it represents, I don’t think this map, this thought that we are actually changing our climate, is getting the treatment it deserves. Instead of stopping a nation, and creating an outcry of demands for action, the Bureau’s new map was just another story on the news. It was almost hum ho. Somehow the idea that we are literally changing the climate in which we live has become a regular news story – something we just absorb in everyday life.
And it’s not as if this is because we can’t figure out what to do, or even figure out who is causing it. We know how this is happening. We can even figure out who it is who is changing out map. It is the fossil fuel companies – the Gina Rinehardts, Clive Palmers, Nathan Tinklers of the world, who are changing our maps. Yet for some reason, we treat this story, we treat them, as if it is something normal – as if they are regular protagonists in a story of competing priorities. But they’re not – we’re not. This is not a normal development, one that can just fit into a news story; one where we need to debate the different priorities until we come to a solution. This is much bigger than that.
Let’s take a step back. Let’s think about what we’re doing. We are actively changing our climate. In fact, there are a small number of individuals and companies who are changing our climate.
This is a big fucking deal.