The longer you live through a crisis, the less likely you are to fully appreciate that you’re in one. This is especially true if there is more than one crisis, and they overlap.
In Australia, we’ve experienced several in the past few years: bushfires and floods turbo-charged by climate change, and an enduring pandemic. These events have all taken place during my time as President of the Australian Academy of Science. As my term draws to a close, I’ve paused to reflect on how we’ve managed these overlapping events.
My observation is this: our natural human ability to absorb and respond to the shock and stress of a crisis, while usually a strength, is not serving us well when it comes to complex and sustained crises. Put differently, we appear to have become complacent. Perhaps a better explanation is that we have “crisis fatigue”.
