The headlines tell the story.
News.com: Chaos as NSW swelters under 43C heat
The Guardian: ‘Toughest conditions imaginable’: Victorians urged to shelter inside
Australian Broadcasting Corproation: Weekend brings fire threat to NSW, with maximums to hit 44C
As a reminder:
44C is 111.2F
32C is 89.6F
Extreme heat kills. In fact, extreme heat already kills more Australians than all other natural hazards combined.
From 1844 to 2010, extreme heat events were responsible for at least 5332 fatalities in Australia and, since 1900, 4555: more than the combined total of deaths from all other natural hazards.
It is also WET.
Just six months ago, catastrophic flooding devastated NSW’s Mid North Coast. Here’s a video from 9 News Australia, with the punchy headline “Worst in History.”
Then again in the new year. The Guardian reports devastating flooding in Queensland, due to Tropical Cyclone Koji.
Some areas experienced up to 13 inches of rainfall in 24 hours, while tens of thousands of cattle died while surrounded by grass and fresh water, stranded on “islands” amid floodwaters.
From the Guardian’s reporting:
It sounds completely absurd,” grazier Angus Propsting says. “But they are actually perishing because they are not drinking, even though they are surrounded by water.”
Some of the famished cattle look upon grass tens of metres from where they perch.
“But if there is a body of water between them, they will starve themselves before they will walk back through any water,” the 31-year-old cattleman says. “They are not leaving their little islands, they are just starving themselves to death. It is like they have given up – or they are too fearful to leave.
And it’s not just Australia. From Southeast Asia, dateline Bangkok, comes this arresting headline: Asia’s 2025 marked by fatal floods, fossil fuel expansion and renewed mining boom
More than 1,800 people across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka died in extreme flooding events over the course of November and December 2025, with death tolls anticipated to rise as humanitarian efforts continue.
Across the three Southeast Asian countries, the deadly floods are believed to have been caused by Cyclone Senyar, which was born out of sudden spikes in heavy rain brought about by human-made global heating. The frequency and intensity of deadly extreme weather events has ramped up in recent years, with the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all experiencing devastating typhoons in 2024.
Yet the human and economic costs of these events have done little to spur meaningful action for much of the region’s energy transition. In Indonesia, despite official plans to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2035, more than 7 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity came online since 2021.
It’s everywhere.
In Italy, where a 2025 heatwave dubbed ‘African blaze’ spiked temperatures in some southern areas to 48C (118.4F).
In green and gentle England, where winters are getting progressively warmer and some gardeners have abandoned their roses in favor of gravel plots featuring Mediterranean plants.
In Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, where the last weeks of 2025 brought extreme heat events in the last weeks of 2025.
In the US (where we are all about the simoleons, except, apparently, when it comes to doing anything about global warming) please note that in 2025there were 23 weather and climate events which each cost a billion dollars or more.
Climate Central notes:
The January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires were the costliest event of the year as well as the costliest wildfire on record. With $61.2 billion in damages, this devastating event was about twice as costly as the previous record wildfire.
The situation is actively absurd. We have been collectively avoiding doing what needs to be done, while waiting until the last possible minute to do those things, and we don’t even know *when* the “last minute” is (although we suspect it might have been a century ago, or 50 years) – we just keep staring out the window at the weather and commenting, “Jeepers! It’s hot! [backyard shed bursts into flames] and “Wow! It’s really coming down out there! [minivan floats merrily away]
It is easy to understand that there is nothing to be done at this point, and much harder to see how any action we puny humans could take would turn this ship around. We are headed for the proverbial iceberg. Collapse seems to be inevitable – if Trump’s Great Greenland Wars don’t take out a bunch of us much sooner than the climate ever could.
Yet a few maniacs (I count myself as one) continue to run around hollering and waving our arms like Elmo on speed. We yammer about collapse, and urgency, and “revolution,” but we are largely ignored. Big accounts and big names – Katharine Hayhoe, Michael E. Mann – command attention, but often peddle hopium so the MSM won’t tune them out.
It’s stupid, but I beat myself up daily, as if anything I have done or said over the last decade would have made a difference. I joined DailyKos on January 8, 2015, hoping to amplify the climate conversation.
My first diary, on May 21, 2015, got something like 255 recommendations. Poor innocent. I had no idea how NOT easy it is to get eyeballs, and recommends, and traction. And I failed in so many ways.
I didn’t post often enough. I didn’t use catchy memes, or cat videos. I was mealy-mouthed. My headlines sucked. I was too angry – not angry enough – maybe angry isn’t even the right tone to strike – should I add more science?
My output was low (I feel lazy) and my voice didn’t stir people. I had to go to work every day, and have friends, and a marriage, and do “life” things, so I was insufficiently devoted to the cause. Despite organizing (IRL!) and marching (IRL!) and calling legislators and sending emails and postcards and tweeting my little brains out, IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE.
And looking back, I realize that there was really never a chance that it would. Not only have I failed, but the project of “stop or slow global warming” has also failed.
We can debate whether or not “awareness has been raised,” but the fact remains that emissions continue to rise, tipping points continue to be passed, and governments drag their feet while publishing self-congratulatory puffery about “tough new standards” and “renewables” and “the green economy.”
Advocating for the actions that the climate deserves means asking people to voluntarily opt into what they would perceive as penury.
Advocating for using less fuel, buying less stuff, eating mess meat, driving less, flying less, using less electricity, and asking the government to implement rationing and make other sharp cuts in our overall fossil fuel consumption was always a fool’s errand.
We’re humans – all of us – and most of us aren’t stupid enough to forgo our labor-saving devices and nice cool air conditioning and Amazon deliveries and cheap ‘n’ cheerful Shein sweaters (not to mention our slowly rising standard of living in less developed nations) and all the rest of it. We are evolutionarily hard-wired to want to succeed, and in our modern world, that means more consumption. More material goods. More leisure. More mod cons.
And anyway, what would this self-imposed regime of penury buy for you, a regular American?
If you, a regular American, eschew beef, you will not personally be immune from the next hurricane.
If you, a regular American, buy second-hand and boycott Amazon, the next heatwave is still coming.
If you, a regular American, vote for climate-friendly policies, your taxes will probably go up, and you won’t magically be spared from rising premiums as your house becomes increasingly difficult to insure because you live in a flood zone.
Sea ice will continue to melt.
The Amazon will continue to be plundered.
Hunger will ravage the Sahel.
Crops will fail, elderly people will die in the heat, and the world will keep spinning away as if you and your careful, climate-friendly, self-sacrificial ways did not exist.
In short, the question “what’s in it for me?” has a simple answer: NOTHING. Nothing now, maybe nothing ever before you die.
The only way to achieve anything is through massive direct action. Enough regular people – preferably in countries with a massive carbon footprint – would need to join together and make a once-in-a-civilization push for change. Tactical. Coordinated. Carefully thought out and implemented for maximum effect.
But we can’t even all agree that the climate is actually changing. Or how fast. Or what it’s causing. Or how bad it will be. Or what the appropriate actions are to take!
A Substacker I follow, Jonathan Tonkin, is a professor of ecology published in Nature and Science, and a winner of NZ Prime Minister’s Emerging Scientist Prize. I enjoy his work. He seems smart and grounded.
He recently posted:
Want to play a role in the battle against climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity?
Talk about it. To your family. To your friends. To Bob down the road. The checkout operator at your local grocer.
Tiny things like a few words can have massive impacts and they’re impossible to predict.
Maybe that’s hopium. Maybe that’s soft soap. Maybe it’s silly. But it resonated with me.
I’m going to keep talking about the climate. I’m going to keep hoping that a few people – and then a few more people – read my words and feel moved to get more active and not give up and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I am going to keep running around and hollering and waving my arms like Elmo. I hope that more and more of you will join me. But I’ve gotta be honest. I no longer have much hope.
Thanks for reading. If you like my work and feel the need for more climate change gloom and doom, check out my Stubstack! https://climaterevolutionnow.substack.com/