Nothing that happened this year came out of the blue. It had all been foretold in the warnings of experts over decades. The problem is that these warnings came mostly from environmental scientists, who are the kinds of experts we are now well-practised in ignoring.

— Waleed Aly, Sydney Morning Herald

Read the full article.

I couldn’t agree more with Waleed Aly in his assessment of the year 2020 and the words we are all guilty of using to describe it.

However, it is a rude awakening for all of us that have been ignoring the environmental scientists and the data they have been providing.

Like Waleed said, “This has no political purchase because it doesn’t capture our imaginations as an electorate. Words like “deforestation” and “biodiversity” are boring, and their concepts seem abstract to us. It’s far easier in a year of crisis like the one we’ve just endured, to focus on the concrete and immediate”.