We are in an unprecedented crisis. Politically it is occurring worldwide, signalled by a rise of authoritarianism and fascism. It is discussed as if it is the product of human foibles, lack of character. However, it is also the product of deeper forces.

Alongside the political crisis, and foundational to it, is that within the natural world: wildfires, floods, hurricanes, rising temperatures of the lands and waters, rising sea levels, the devastation of forests and other ecosystems.

I recently visited The New School in Manhattan NY to speak about Waste and Justice in the Tishman Environment and Design Centre. This course of study concerns the connections between waste, justice, design and activism.

The concepts of waste and justice are examined as human constructs with impacts on each other in the context of a rapidly changing climate, human movements and increasing production and consumption of ever-expanding urbanised populations. The global economy has breached planetary standards of survival.

This kind of course needs to be taught worldwide, it gets to the crux of the complexity of what we are dealing with, and we need to be dealing with it fast.

There are climate change refugees even within the USA, where the conservative figure is three million people and expected to be as many as 50 million by 2050.

The refugees at the borders of the USA and Australia are climate change refugees because the social and political changes that have them fleeing wars, political violence and gang warfare, are the result of increasingly scarce resources.

The world is now characterised by a rise of "strongmen" at all levels, beginning at the community level.

Globally there are 123 million people who have been forced to flee their homes including 44 million transnational refugees in the world today.

Now more than ever we need to study the philosophies whose deep time perspective contains the paradigms for human behaviour on Earth. We need to understand that we too are products of nature, a part of the natural world.

Dr Victoria Grieves Williams is Warraimaay from the midnorth coast of NSW and an historian. She was recently on the advisory committee of the Reconciliation Australia project "Recognising Community Truth Telling: an exploration of local truth telling in Australia"(2023).