Local responses to climate impacts misplaced

July 22, 2025

A focus on the marine crisis in South Australia as a matter of state versus national politics, wildly misconstrues the context and misapprehends the looming danger. Like the drought impacting Southeastern South Australia and the western half of Victoria, the dystopian-like conditions these events are characterised by are entirely consistent with all of the predictions for the extreme impacts of climate change. In Australia, the droughts and flooding rains of the past were, for all their harshness, part of a cycle our biological systems had long adapted to. These new extremities are unable to be responded to so, as we are seeing on the South Australian coast, things break. Local responses will have little impact. The effect is linear and rapidly worsening. Quibbling over which tier of government needs to respond misses the point entirely.