We’ve heard this rhetoric from leaders before, phrases that are filling Australia’s youth with despair. As I write this, the thick, hot air outside my home is an eerie, walnut glow from the 300-plus fires that burn across Australia. But my view is not nearly as extraordinary compared to the fluorescent orange-like blanket that envelops northern New South Wales. I read a meteorologist’s explanation of what happens when a firestorm creates a weather pattern of its own: ‘dry lightning’, ‘firenados’ and ‘black hail’. There are floods in England, wildfires in California, a typhoon clean-up underway in Japan and Venice, Italy is underwater. 11,000 scientists have signed a paper calling for urgent climate action while the UN reports that climate-crisis disasters are occurring once a week. I think of the opening scene in the 1995 post-apocalyptic flick , where doomsday headlines and news scenes are flashed in a montage, events that end up forcing humans underground. I feel overwhelmed. My heart beats faster. I cry. If there ever was a preview to what an apocalypse looks like, I think, we’re living it.