Write about your dream home.

Owning your dream home is something of an obsession in Australia. I am certain that this preoccupation holds true in the United States, Britain, Canada and other nations dominated by neoliberal capitalism. There is nothing wrong with dreaming about your ideal home. I never begrudge anyone their success. However, we cannot sit and idly dream about a wonderful home is an age of anthropogenic climate change.

When hurricanes, floods, increasingly severe droughts, the encroachment of industrialised farming into previously untouched forests, worsening torrential downpours impact our houses, then it is high time to reevaluate our economic system that makes a dream home ever more illusory and out of reach.

Sydney has been promoted by real estate companies and investment property developers as the place of the ‘good life’. There is merit in that description. Sydney has a wonderful harbour, coastline, lots of inlets along the Parramatta river, beaches which are the envy of the world.

Western Sydney is the location of ever-expanding suburbia – and transport and services are always slow to follow the increasing population. As house prices and rents increase dramatically, the dream home is increasingly out of reach. The median house price in Sydney is currently $1.1 million.

Whenever the subject of mortgages arises in Sydney conversations – and basically that is the main topic of upwardly mobile yuppie types among the adult population – the alternative question is posed – why don’t you move out of Sydney?

The main commercial free-to-air channels in Sydney have almost become investment property promotion vehicles. Numerous home renovation programmes fill the airwaves; The Block, Love It or List It, just to name a few. Each programme sells not just a home, but human drama. Couples are pitted against each other, timetables for renovation are challenged, the overly effervescent and Aussie blokey Scotty Cam turns up to announce the week’s winners. All great drama – but also selling the fantasy of individualistic competition.

The Central and Northern Coasts of NSW are beautiful places. Offered as an alternative to the overly competitive and crowded Sydney, the good life can purportedly be found in the small towns and suburbs dotting the coastline. Certainly there is some truth to this – finding a dream home is much easier and affordable in locations outside of Sydney. Smaller communities provide a collective refuge from the relentless hustle-and-bustle of the big city of Sydney.

Human induced climate change, which has turned rainfall into a weapon, has hit towns such as Lismore, with severe flooding requiring numerous rescues and evacuations. Lismore and northern NSW towns are still struggling to rebuild after the devastating 2022 floods.

No, this is definitely not a case of a Sydneysider feeling schadenfreude over the suffering of Lismore and Northern NSW residents. I am drawing attention to the fact that runaway climate change has made finding that dream home all the more difficult. Indeed, in recent days, Sydney was hit with heavy rainstorms and flash flooding. Town Hall, a major CBD station, was flooded in a matter of minutes.

The severe thunderstorm that lashed Sydney on February 10 generated not only flooding, but prompted at least 550 calls to emergency services. Our homes and streets are not built to withstand increasing heavy rainfall episodes. Sydneysiders; we are in no position to lecture others about how to handle climate change induced emergency situations.

The dream homes of North Queensland have been inundated in recent days. Rollingstone, a semi-rural residential town 54 kilometres north of Townsville, Queensland, copped 702 mm (27.6 inches) of rain in 24 hours. This is just one example of the deluge that hit North Queensland in recent days and weeks.

Marina Koren, writing in The Atlantic, states that water, the cosmic source of life, has been turned into a weapon – more correctly, rainfall is now a source of great anxiety. Anthropogenic climate change has accelerated the rain-water cycle, with heavier precipitation caused by the increasing amount of moisture held by the warming atmosphere.

Please do not mistake my cautious approach with pessimism. I have no desire to belittle anyone’s dream home. If you are happy, and living your best life, more credit to you.

It’s great to have a dream house, but what will you do when 700 mm of water falls on your head?