Inventing new levels of crazy Down Under

When I visited my delightful homeland in 2007, the powers-that-be in south-east Queensland were busy inventing new levels of water restrictions. The region of 2+ million people only had a couple of months of fresh wet stuff left, so the four-level water restrictions suddenly received a level 5. No baths. No outdoor water use, especially car washing. 2-minute showers. It was a kid's dreamland. As the drought wore on, there were murmurings of creating a level 6, but torrential rain came and flooded everything. (Handy!)

Then they updated the fire danger billboards that dot the countryside. Gone is the level 'none'. Instead, they start at 'moderate' and work their way up.  

Image: bushfireCRC.com

Now, the entire country is inventing new levels of heat alert. Forget the traditional get-the-F-out blood red of the old-school heat maps. Now they've added vibrant purple and neon pink to the mix. Which kind of does say 'get-the-F-out', but with extra pizzazz. 

Image: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

In case you were wondering, no, this isn't standard practice. When I was a kid, 37°C was an outlandish and rare high. Now my friends are sweltering through 40+° almost every summer, and it's triggering firestorms with startling regularity. (Although, to be fair, firestorms ain't nothing new Down Under.)

The bitter, sweltering irony is that the two nations that have apparently given most credence to climate-change-deniers are the U.S.A. and, you guessed it, Australia. Despite the fact that we're inventing new extremes on the fly for decades-old weather alerts, some people are still having a hard time coming round to the idea that all of that mining and deforestation and air-con and reliance on automobiles and other stupid, wasteful stuff is negatively impacting humans' ability to simply survive on that big, dry island. Reckon these new extremes might just help poke a hole in that delusion, though. Either that, or the hold-outs will just get more stubborn. 

So here's an idea: Don't just warn about weather extremes, Australia. Warn about stupidity extremes too! You can even use the same colour scheme to do it: Just gather up all the climate-change-deniers, mining advocates, car-loving air-con freaks and the rest, and clothe them all in vibrant purple and neon pink. If rational citizens can't beat tone environmental curse, at least they can get some help avoiding the other.