What do you call a planet where the temperature sets a new record every month, where the northern ice cap is melting at disastrous pace, where drought and flood have begun to alternate with devastating relentlessness? You call it Earth, in 2016.
Australians have had a front row seat to the carnage. The oceans have warmed so much that only 7 per cent of the coral reefs across the Great Barrier Reef have completely avoided bleaching, and experts are saying the northern hemisphere is set for its worst reef-bleaching events this summer. In Tasmania, bushfires have ravaged more than 1000-year-old forests. In Sydney and the Pacific region, fierce storms have lashed the coast.