When record-breaking bushfires tore through much of eastern Australia in late 2019, Melbourne resident Carolyn Glascodine suffered a severe bout of depression. “I was in despair,” the 58-year-old editor says. “I literally couldn’t get out of bed.”
For years she says she watched Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government brush aside warnings of climate scientists and continue to back fossil fuel extraction and carbon-intensive industry.
The bushfires, which destroyed towns and cloaked Sydney and Melbourne in smoke for weeks, showed her what was at stake in a country that is both rich in fossil fuels and unusually exposed to the worst effects of global warming.