Australia's national climate: learning to adapt?

Abstract

Pride in Australia's extreme climate has long been a part of Australia's national identity. Today, climate continues to be enrolled in a range of nationalistic projects, including the (re)development of climate science and other responses to climate change. In this paper, we outline some of the contours of the ‘Australian national climate’, claims to know it, and four idealised responses to it: bounce back, dismissal, endurance, and migration. We argue that the deeply cultural framing of climate in Australia—in particular, Australians' emphasis on the climate's inherent variability and unknowability, and their own historical adaptability—is being exploited by the federal government and hampering climate change mitigation nationally.

Building cultural capital in drought adaptation: lessons from discourse analysis

“…This is consistent with research by other scholars elsewhere in Australia (e.g. Anderson 2014;Jones 2017;Rickards et al 2017). These authors point out that an emphasis on drought's agency as an aberrant, negative event works to serve an important cultural function -coalescing social identities around those directly impacted by it, and those who seek to support those who are impacted by it.…”

“…They also have considerable political salience. As Rickards et al (2017) points out, divisive cultural framings of climate related issues such as drought and climate variability are often used to gain political favour as community support is mobilised and political sympathy for producers fighting against the impacts of drought is demanded.…”

“…The community and social networks in which agricultural systems and livelihoods are embedded will also play a role in the shift towards greater drought preparedness and adaptation. As several studies have already found, as well as being a climatic phenomenon, drought is also a socially and politically mediated concept with cultural significance in Australia at a personal, community and national level (see, for example, Cockfield 2013;Anderson 2014;Jones 2017;Rickards et al 2017). Other studies have demonstrated that greater climate adaptation will require changes to the knowledge and beliefs that individuals, groups and social systems draw upon to understand, respond and adapt to environmental change and their associated socioeconomic risks (Adger et al 2011(Adger et al , 2013Marshall and Stokes 2014).…”

Shoe: Towards a promiscuous politics of emergency evacuation mobility

“…Shoes were shared between those attempting to evacuate the buildings. Although shoes could reinforce the heroic ‘ruptural’ models of action which feminist philosopher Bonnie Honig (2013) sees have ‘bewitched’ (154) progressive politics, narratives around 9/11 – and even some emergency imaginations around climate change rooted in settler-colonial imaginations of endurance and wildness (Rickards et al., 2017) – might they also express an alternative politics of emergency?…”

Fuzzy boundaries: Simulation and expertise in bushfire prediction

“…Cultural dispositions towards climate and environment also have a profound influence (Hulme, 2016). In Australia, one of the most fireprone regions in the world, the ability to endure environmental volatility is a source of nationalistic pride (Rickards et al, 2017). But while bushfires in general are consistently positioned as 'part of the Australian experience', to quote a former prime minister, specific fires are often treated as disastrous aberrations (Neale, 2018).…”