De-naturalising disaster - climate change and marginalisation in Australia

Earth Matters · Jul 10, 2016

Feeling hopeless is an understandable response in the face of climate change. In fact, an emerging field of research is focusing on the mental health impacts of our changing climate. This can be in the wake of natural disasters such as floods and bushfires, but also the slower creeping effects of climate change like drought and displacement. But the biggest environmental threat to life in Australia is the one we hear least about. You perhaps wouldn’t know it, but urban heatwaves are the most fatal kind of natural disaster, killing more people than bushfires, floods or cyclones. Elderly women…