Five years ago I woke in the middle of the night and wrote a letter to myself about climate change. I’ve never shared it with anyone. I didn’t think other people would relate to how I was feeling. But now that articles about the end of civilisation are going viral, I can see I’m not the only one who’s been up late at night, shuddering with this awful premonition.

The letter I wrote to myself is called ‘living in the lag’, and it starts like this. ‘The world around you right now no longer exists. The conditions that created it have already changed and the society you know remains the same only due to inertia. Recognise this lag. Plan according not to what you see around you today — a reality established by causes decades or centuries before — but according to the emerging conditions that will dictate the future.’

All abstract stuff, so let me draw out the lessons.

My Canadian friend first learned of Australia Day when he saw the snow bogans. It was 26 January in the Rocky Mountains, and three blokes were snowboarding bare-chested down the slope wearing Australian flags as capes.

He told me this story as we drove up a winding road to the Victorian alps on 26 January this year. Rather than white with snow, the grass was drought-yellow in the paddocks on the valley floor far below. At the car park to our hiking trail we applied sunscreen and tightened the chinstraps on our floppy hats. The sun was low in the sky but already searing.

As we took our first steps on the trail, I thought how my friend’s story provided a refreshing perspective on Australia Day. Rather than the conflict over colonial invasion, he had identified something else in the national holiday — a kind of yobbo pride at defying the elements.

THE ELECTION OF TRUMP HIGHLIGHTS the extreme political polarisation in the United States, and few issues are as tribal as climate change. From near bipartisanship in the 1970s, views on global warming among Republicans and Democrats diverged in the 1980s and widened into a chasm under Obama.

ON 28 SEPTEMBER AN EXTREME STORM lashed South Australia and the entire state lost power. How could this have happened?

It’s a question that has occupied the country for the last three weeks as politicians and commentators have peddled their unqualified opinions in an escalating culture war about the role of renewable energy.

WHAT A LOVELY DAY FOR SCRAREMONGERING. On 7 July this year, South Australia experienced a cold snap. As residents turned on their heaters, the still and cloudy conditions meant wind and solar power couldn’t contribute much to meeting electricity demand. The last coal plant at Port August had closed a few months before, pushed out of the market by renewable energy.

DISCONTENT HAS REACHED AUSTRALIA. The brash anti-establishment populism of the Tea Party and Trump in the US, Brexit and UKIP in the UK and a menagerie of left and right parties in Europe has finally washed up on our shores.

IT’S A CREDO of consumer capitalism: never address the cause when you can create an industry treating the symptoms. This is the logic behind many profitable businesses, from cholesterol-lowering pills that compensate for poor diet and lack of exercise to factories that recycle unnecessary packaging.

Now there’s a new technofix on the table, and it’s called geoengineering.

A FEW WORDS could build political will to tackle climate change much faster. Just a few. The problem is no one is quite sure what they are.

It would have made a great April Fools joke — if it wasn’t only February. On Wednesday, we woke to the news that Greg Hunt, environment minister in the most anti-environment government in Australian history, had been awarded ‘World’s Best Minister’ at an international summit in Dubai.

OH HOW WE LOVE cheaper petrol. After years of writing pain-at-the-pump puns, journalists are giddy at the prospect of prices heading south for once.

I HAVE A cause to promote, but I’m not asking you to sign a petition, lobby your local member of parliament or take to the streets in a procession of orderly outrage. I don’t want you
 to do anything, because what I want to take action against is taking action itself.

I am proposing a National Day of Not Doing Much.

COMPOST IS ITSELF A COMPOST OF IDEAS. The modern method was invented in the early 1930s when British agricultural scientist Sir Albert Howard witnessed the fertilising techniques of Indian peasant farmers, and began to conduct his own experiments in fermenting agricultural waste. Eastern wisdom, Western science and Mother Earth mysticism combined to create the miraculous process we still use today. Sir Albert’s compost principles, published in 1931, remain as relevant as ever. An efficient compost needs a carbon-nitrogen ratio of about 33:1, which means for every bucket of nitrogen-rich ‘greens’ (kitchen scraps, lawn clippings or weeds) you should add a bucket of carbon-rich ‘browns’ (dried leaves, hay or shredded paper). The trick is to keep the compost moist but not wet; a bit like the texture of a well-wrung-out sponge, or, in Sir Albert’s milieu, a sweaty colonialist’s breeches…

For the full story, pick up Smith Journal Volume 11.

As the Australian public baulks at even a modest carbon price, climate change activists have set their sights on what is pragmatic and convenient, not what is truly necessary, writes Greg Foyster.

ON JUNE 18, the Australian Senate launched an inquiry into “The Abbott Government’s attacks on Australia’s environment, and their effects on our natural heritage and future prosperity”.

Initiated by the Greens, the inquiry lists a litany of grievances: abolishing the Climate Commission and the Biodiversity Fund, attempting to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and carbon price, cutting funding to Environmental Defenders Offices, and attempting to de-list a swathe of forest from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Areas.

It was an obvious political ploy, and the message was clear: the Coalition is tearing through Australia’s environmental programs like a Hummer bush-bashing in the Daintree.

SAY YOU’RE IN THE MARKET for a second car. You’ve already got the station wagon to drop off the kids at school, but your partner drives it and you want your own set of wheels, something zippy and hassle-free. You travel into the city for work so it’s got to be small and easy to park in tight spots. And fuel efficient, that’s important too. Money’s tight enough as it is.

A FEW WEEKS AGO, as a cool change swept away Melbourne’s mid-January heatwave, my partner and I went for a walk around our block. The air temperature had plummeted about ten degrees in 30 minutes, but as we passed a new two-storey home with no surrounding vegetation and a mound of gravel for a front lawn, I felt a surge of residual warmth. The house’s dark-grey exterior seemed to shimmer with stored-up heat.

Hurrying on, I wondered how this house — and so many others like it — would cope with future heatwaves.

THROUGHOUT THE 2013 Federal election campaign, both major parties have pledged to address ‘cost of living’ pressures. Kevin Rudd used the phrase 14 times during a press conference the day after calling the election, and the Liberal Party includes ‘cost of living’ among its 11-point criticism of Labor on its campaign website. Tony Abbott’s recent announcement of a generous paid parental leave scheme is another example of tapping into middle-class anxiety over making ends meet. But is the average Australian household really ‘doing it tough’?

THE TERM ‘CLIMATE ALARMIST’ is usually reserved for high-profile activists, scientists or politicians — think Bill McKibben, Tim Flannery or Al Gore — who raise concerns about the catastrophic impacts of future global warming. But with the release of some frightening reports over the last 12 months, those who deny the scientific consensus on climate change will have to expand their list of ‘alarmists’ to include some unlikely suspects — the World Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the International Energy Agency.