As soon as summer hit I knew we were in trouble. The bedroom gets the sun all afternoon. It was like an oven - we have fans running all the time just to try and keep air circulating.
Potts Point, NSW
I moved to Australia last year. My partner is Australian and she’d had a really stressful time during the Black Summer fires. The fires got really close to her childhood home and she thousands of miles away glued to the ABC trying to find out what was happening.
We’re lucky enough to live in the eastern bit of Sydney, and we normally get a decent breeze through, even on hot days. But our apartment is west facing and we don’t have air conditioning.
As soon as summer hit I knew we were in trouble. The bedroom gets the sun all afternoon. It was like an oven – we have fans running all the time just to try and keep air circulating. My partner and I weren’t getting any sleep and were starting to snap at each other.
It wasn’t even that hot this year. I don’t know how we’d cope in a heatwave. And I don’t know how we’d cope if it keeps getting hotter. It really makes me question how long we could live here for.
I know I’m really lucky, because whenever I drive a bit further west or north, out into the suburbs, the temperature rises about 5 degrees. We’ve got a few trees on our street for shade, but I really feel for families moving out there, where there’s no shade on the streets or in gardens.
I’ll never understand why Australia isn’t at the front of the queue demanding climate action. There’s so much at stake – and so much opportunity if we get the transition right.
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As a high school teacher, I experience first had the climate anxiety. After the Black Summer, I consoled so many students who struggled to come to terms with what they saw happen in our state.
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