Climate change storm clouds are gathering...........

One hears talk about prolonged climate change impacts leading to future mass migration of displaced persons and national security threats, but few actually talk about the degree of political and social conflict that Australia may experience due to the fact that it is already a relatively dry continent over much of its land mass with the majority of food cultivation and domestic stock grazing occurring on what can only be termed marginal land.
Or the fact that existing means of primary production meant to feed over 21 million citizens is estimated to be in the hands of less than 125,000 families/corporations.
Little mention is also made of the fact that the definition of terrorism and draconian federal/state anti-terrorism laws are now capable of including legitimate and peaceful public dissent against government policy or corporate business practice.

It seems that few are contemplating what climate change-focused civil unrest will be like.

However last Monday Ian McHugh from Crikey gave us a thumbnail of the possible beginning of things to come when he wrote about the Hazelwood power station protest:

The Australian mainstream is not used to fighting against government policies on the ground – the average suburbanite, which, myself included, is what most of us are, has transient experience of it at best because we've grown up in a country that has been free, stable, prosperous and reasonably equitable for a few generations, and those kinds of muscles have inevitably atrophied.
But this is what lends significance to yesterday's action, even if the numbers are not yet on the ground – that despite a probable discomfort with the idea of civil disobedience, people who would really rather be doing something else turned up anyway, because they feel that this is what things have come to.
And it's something that modern day governments, particularly those that obsess over media appearances, ought to be thinking about – if the climate change issue is met with platitudes in public and police on the ground, then the pictures that flow from that will become increasingly ugly.
Strongarming a dreadlocked protester dressed like a wombat might not be a particularly good look, but handing out the same treatment to the more conservative looking; the very old, the very young, doctors, plumbers, lawyers, teachers, nurses, WORKING FAMILIES – the 'ordinary' folk -- is infinitely worse.