As climate breakdown, war and institutional failure converge, the comforts of forgetting no longer shield us from the consequences of our own history.

It feels like the end of an era, or perhaps the start of something new…and terrifying.

Alas, I am far from alone in the fear that planet Earth is whirling into its last days as its protective atmosphere heats beyond its power to sustain mammalian life-forms; or that some inherent quality in our lizard brain commands us to destroy our own species in a lunatic quest for dominion. Or perhaps you’d prefer the welcome mat of a Christian fervour for Armageddon disguised as some spiritual ‘Rapture’.

It is the second occasion in my lifetime that the possibility of human extinction has been widely and seriously contemplated. The first was during my journalistic cadetship in the 1960s with the Kennedy/Khrushchev crisis. But it was over in a flash; so easy to forget.

Today by contrast, the prognosis throughout the sweep of mass media is fearful at best from the New York Times to the academic calculus, or the bright sparks of Hollywood projecting their crystal-clear messages of a dystopian future. They too have access to AI.

Trust in the great institutions of the past, from government to industry to communal honesty and pride, where once they powered our hubris, are falling by the wayside. Even the venerable Liberal Party no longer warms the cockles of a windswept generation; Labor is frozen by fear.

The optimists will point to the past when time and again the good guys ‘muddled through’ and the crises tripped and fell on the banana peels of history. But that was before the entire globe approached boiling point – and only two atomic bombs could end conflict in the Pacific.

Today is different. If we do nothing at all, we’re destined for disaster. Even if we double our efforts to cut the hot carbon gases from yesterday’s buried forests, we will not escape the consequences. The great climate change migration will itself trigger the wars and the genocide of a craven species: Gaza for one and all. (Netanyahu is a human being too.)

It’s no one’s fault but our own. Eighty years from the end of World War II we’re the victims of what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called his beloved mother’s ‘“forgettery”. (Only Kevin could have made up such a word.) In his mind, it was a tribute to her wonderful capacity to forget and forgive. Alas, it does equal service to our own inability to heed the lessons of our past.

The ambitious ideals that created the United Nations soon faded into the shadows of adolescent nationalism where they withered and died. Reason gave ground to religion, debate to military power, investment to exploitation.

As a War Baby generation melded into a massive Boomer bell curve, we were spoiled by our members of parliament. Vietnam called our younger siblings to a foolish war. In its wake, migration made our modest homes treasure houses; our aging health and racist fears met by taxing the future…until the system revealed the wasteland of our preparations.

Now we know that our children will pay, in a world where each day there will be news of disaster rising – 1000 lost at sea, 2,000 in a city blaze, 100,000 down with heat stroke, one million starved to death.

How do we apologise for our forgettary? Kindly Mrs Rudd’s was born of generosity. Ours had a lesser parentage, more Nero than hero, we indulged ourselves in good fortune as all around us, the signs cried out their warnings: Corruption rules! (Putin is a human being too.)

Loud, but not loud enough to divert our attention (‘No worries’) from the glimpse of what’s to come. Little wonder half the world is choosing to sniff and snort its way through its last ten-dollar bill. (Trump is a human being too.)