As this newsletter reaches you, it’ll be almost spring in Australia. While some days were impossibly cold across inland New South Wales—at times, the wind felt as if it were blowing directly from Antarctica—parts of the country experienced the warmest winter on record, breaking maximum and minimum temperature records.

Walking in bone-biting cold is no fun for anyone, and many will be happy that winter isn’t as cold as it has been in the past, particularly given the energy and fuel prices. As a species, we tend to be incredibly short-sighted on matters like this. Our survival as individuals always trumps the wellbeing of future generations.

This story of a warmer winter is part of a bigger global tale. Over the past few months, there have been dozens of media reports in Australia about searingly hot temperatures and raging wildfires in the northern hemisphere, alongside those confirming an El Niño is forming as Australia moves into the warmer part of the year. As I wander the roads and bush tracks around me on weekends, or take a short jaunt with the dog around my back paddock after work, I’m thinking of what this means not just for the months ahead, but for the years to come.

Part of my creative walking practice is documenting the tiny worlds beneath my feet: watching and listening to the little things I encounter on my walks, like the sundews that colonise bare patches of ground in wet winters, and the lichens and mosses that cloak the rubble and rocks on the stony ridge to the north of my house, where the melodic Rufous whistlers scold high in the pine thicket. As the remainder of 2026 becomes hotter and drier here, the sundews will disappear for who knows how long, and the mosses will turn to dust.

Walking, my mind turns to the summer ahead and the anxiety I know will build with the growing risk of bushfires, and how the lack of political will to tackle the human drivers of this changing climate has brought us to this. The science on climate change is irrefutable, and yet it is still a political football. Like other countries, there’s a culture war underway in Australia that sidelines any meaningful action on how we adapt to what’s coming. Trust in governments and institutions, including in science and scientists, has eroded like the ancient rocks beneath my feet, bit by bit over time.

It’s too late to curb increasing temperatures in any meaningful way. Our winters will continue to warm, along with our summers. But as the cost of living rises, housing remains unaffordable or unavailable to many, and food security concerns grow, an increasing number of people across the world are now vulnerable, and there are no mechanisms in place to support our adaptation to this warmer world.

Worse still, our increasingly fragile environment, with which we are so entangled—knowingly or not—is being left to fend for itself. H5N1 bird flu has finally arrived on our island’s shores, and we have no way to stop its spread. It’s already causing the death of mammal species, like the long-nosed fur seal found in southern parts of Australia. Bird flu will inevitably spread more quickly across the country during the warmer seasons to come, as water-seeking migratory birds bring the virus further inland. It will be another contributor to the demise of species we were already prepared to let go.

As I step out of winter into spring, grief walks with me.

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