Climate change widens the racial divide in the Australian outback

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1. COOBER PEDY, Australia — From her front door, Sonya Crombie can see the sandstone hills where White men carved up the land in search of opal and then stayed, turning their mines into elaborate underground homes insulated from the desert heat.

   But when Crombie’s air conditioner broke in November just as the scorching summer was about to set in, the ailing 60-year-old Aboriginal woman had no tunnel in which to take refuge. As the temperature in her state-run house topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Crombie struggled to breathe. Emergency workers flew her 500 miles to a hospital.

   “I nearly died,” she said. “This heat can kill you.”

   Extreme heat is surging around the world as climate change drives up temperatures and threatens to force [hundreds of millions](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050) of people from their homes by 2050. Poor countries will be affected the most.

   Australia is one of the wealthiest nations per capita, but the statistics hide the stark and stubborn divide in quality of life between its Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

   Nowhere is this more evident than in Coober Pedy, a remote outback community of about 1,500 people in South Australia that is effectively split in two.

   Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/19/climate-change-australia-aboriginal-people/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/19/climate-change-australia-aboriginal-people/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)

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