Australia is pining for a fossil fuel ‘normal’ that is already gone

There is something wonderful quotation From a conference Energy Minister Chris Bowen held a few weeks ago:

“Obviously, we’ve also called for an end to the conflict in the Middle East so that the Middle East can return to more normal arrangements and the world can return to a more normal economy. That would be a good thing.”

Normal. What a word. It used to be used a lot in climate systems, when Earth’s climate systems shook in painful, unnatural ways that people regularly called the “new normal” and we suffered for it.