Will 2018 be the year of climate action? Victorian London's 'Great Stink' sewer crisis might tell us
Will 2018 be the year of climate action? Victorian London's 'Great Stink' sewer crisis might tell us Chris Turney , UNSW In the late 19th century, the irrepressible Mark Twain is reputed to have said in a speech : Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. He’s said to have borrowed that quote from a friend, but if Twain were alive today he would no doubt have more to say on the subject. In a time when we are becoming increasingly accustomed to extremes in the climate system, the events of this year have risen above the background noise of political turmoil to dominate the global headlines. While global leadership in dealing with climate change may be depressingly limited, I can’t help but wonder if 2018 will be the year our global tribe feels threatened enough to act. Encouragingly, there may be a historical (and largely unknown) precedent for tackling climate change: Victoria London’s handling of the “Great Stink”, where growth had