Dear Australia, elegy for a summer of loss | Amy Coopes

The climate emergency seemed so abstract. It was something that was happening elsewhere, to other people. Until it wasn'tFor months leading into this bleakest of summers, all anyone out this way could talk about was the dry. It crunched underfoot, was carried on the furnace-blast of a breeze, dust and dry leaves rattling down the wide avenues and riverbanks of the once mighty Murray River like a premonition of loss.It was written in the furrowed brows of farmers poring over district forecasts like they were scripture - ethereal in their promise of deliverance or damnation. Dry as the bones, pronounced, beneath the hides of animals starving and stunned; landscape bleached as a fossil. Continue reading...