Environment and climate

Many Paleozoic cockroaches could fly. Because they could fly, they could navigate prehistoric swamps. Because their bodies were thin, they could squeeze into narrow cracks where they might avoid predators and survive environmental hazards. They are built to scale any surface, even sheer ones. Young cockroaches can regenerate lost antennae and limbs. They can eat almost anything, including their own moulted shells, and dead animals, living plants, excreta, fingernails, wallpaper, boxes, envelopes.

What makes an organism fit? How can we measure its fitness? What are the unfit bits?

So I am wondering where things stand in this ‘nation of meat-eaters’…

It is a tragedy for the planet’s wild creatures if they disappear: it is also a tragedy for us. If we lose all but our most domesticated companions, do we risk becoming something less than the humans we once were? Can we bear to live with just ourselves?’

The impasse is a dead end, a cul de sac: a space to induce anxiety, even panic. The book I was writing had reached a kind of impasse.

Two new works of Australian speculative fiction were on my mind when 2016 was declared the hottest year on record,…

The relationship between colonialism, capitalism and environmental degradation and a consequent link to climate change is unambiguous.

‘In such a moment, what, one wants to ask, is the purpose of stories?’

This Changes Everything builds on Klein’s anti-capitalist critique. In her sly way, Klein is honest enough about the disguised Marxism of her project. Rather than proceed with a straightforward assault on neoliberalism – perhaps she assumes we have read The Shock Doctrine first – Klein instead takes us into the Heartland of the Deniers, visiting right wing climate denial conferences, where the tinfoil hat wearers are only too happy to tell her why they fear climate science so much.

Kenny was at home in Redesdale, country Victoria, on Saturday 7 February 2009. By mid-afternoon, an advancing column of smoke could be seen from his old farmhouse. He was prepared to defend what he describes as ‘most of my life … this house, library, paintings – my own and those by others – manuscripts, notebooks, sketchbooks, correspondence, photographs, family heirlooms’.