As the air has become hotter and the smoke thicker, the rhetoric around Australia’s bushfire crisis has become more unedifying. Greens MP Adam Bandt has repeated his claim that the prime minister is personally responsible for the three deaths so far. Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce speculated that two of the victims voted for the Greens, making them somehow complicit in their own deaths. Such mad fringes politically feed off the climate risk and associated bushfire dangers that have become Australia’s entrenched culture war.

It’s been three decades since a world leader stood at the United Nations to declare: "The environmental challenge which confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out."