When the nation hits a new record average maximum temperature one day in December and then breaks that record the next we are facing a new reality.
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![It's dry out there. Don't waste water. Picture: Getty Images It's dry out there. Don't waste water. Picture: Getty Images](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc77vsw8jh1y9f05x0ovu.jpg/r0_108_2121_1305_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
This, coupled with the size and frequency of bushfires across the country so early in the season over several years and the record drought, means it is getting harder to deny the globe, or at the very least our large corner of it, is heating up.
Less than a week out from Christmas, traditionally a much cooler time than what we experience in late January and February, Canberra, along with almost all of the continent, is bunkering down.
Wednesday easily topped the forecast 37 degrees. Thursday is expected to be 40, Friday 38 and Saturday 42. When Sunday, with its promised 31 degrees, arrives it is going to feel like autumn.
Who would have thought just a few short years ago that natives of the bush capital would be braving 42 degree temperatures to do their Christmas shopping or to depart for the coast?
This week's speculation and concern about climate change ... is the direct result of a collective national experience that can't be ignored.
This week's speculation and concern about climate change, the bushfire crisis and the rising temperatures is not being driven by the media, "greenies" or activists. It is the direct result of a collective national experience that can't be ignored. Climate change deniers are just as hot, smoke-ridden and irritable right now as the most fervent environmental advocates. Nobody is walking around in their own private air conditioned bubble saying: "I don't know what is bothering you; I'm perfectly cool".
It seems pointless to waste further time and energy on a futile effort to argue with the most hardcore climate change deniers over whether or not this is just a cyclical weather phenomenon or something mankind has contributed to and can have some influence over.
National governments, including ours, don't need a one hundred per cent consensus from the electorate, or even their own members, to accept the science and take steps identified as necessary to mitigate the worst effects of the climate emergency.
We should be doing more. The ACT government is to be commended for the leadership it has shown on embracing renewables and taking the issue on at a national and global level.
But that isn't enough. The big challenge, right here and right now, is in dealing with the issues the rising temperatures have brought to Canberra. These include future street tree planting decisions and the provision of adequate services to ensure the aged and the vulnerable are kept safe.
Our situation is complicated by the fact we are the largest city in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's food bowl and home to dozens of cities and towns only weeks and months away from running dry.
Writers to our letters page have repeatedly asked how, given the dire straits most of the basin is in, Canberrans can continue to be so prodigal in their use of water, thanks to some of the lowest restrictions in the country.
Just because we have good reserves because of the investment made for the national capital, we shouldn't be complacent nor squander this resource while other communities wither.
Cities such as Dubbo could be relying on water tankers within weeks. It behoves us then, from a point of empathy with our compatriots as much as anything, to show restraint in our use of water until we all come through this very trying time.