Global climate inaction’s cascading costs: How Australia’s fire, flood, and food crises mirror systemic colonial extraction and delayed justice
Original framing: “No avoiding the cost of inaction on climate, Anthony Albanese says in New York” — The Guardian - World
The *trickster* here is the *‘climate leader’* label itself—a *Hermes-like* mask worn by Australia to distract from its role as a *fossil fuel enabler*. Like the *Anansi* spider weaving tales to avoid responsibility, Albanese’s speech at the UN is a *masterful deflection*: it invokes urgency while the government approves new gas projects. The *absurdity* lies in calling Australia a ‘climate leader’ while it *blocks* Pacific Island states from the UN Security Council to discuss climate security—a move *Eshu* (Yoruba trickster) would mock as ‘dancing on the grave of the future.’ The real trick is making *inaction* seem like *leadership*, a ruse exposed by Indigenous fire practitioners who’ve been right all along.
Australia’s climate crisis is not a failure of public awareness but a *deliberate* outcome of settler-colonial capitalism, where *land theft*, *fossil fuel extraction*, and *neoliberal governance* have converged to create a system that *externalizes* ecological costs onto Indigenous peoples, the Global South, and future generations.
The *trickster* here is the myth of ‘climate leadership’—a narrative that allows Australia to *export* its emissions (via coal and gas) while *importing* climate migrants and *blocking* reparations, all under the guise of ‘economic pragmatism.’ Historical patterns, from the *1930s Dust Bowl* to *Dutch colonial water management*, show that delayed climate action leads to *state collapse*—yet Australia’s policies are designed to *delay* rather than adapt, prioritizing *short-term GDP* over *long-term resilience*. The solution lies in *reparative decolonization*: restoring Indigenous fire sovereignty, enforcing fossil fuel non-proliferation, and funding Global South climate debt, while treating land as a *living relative* (not a resource). The *absurdity* of the current path—where a nation burns its future for profit—is the *trickster’s* clearest lesson: the system is not broken; it is *working exactly as designed*.