Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Debjani Ganguly, Professor of Literature, Australian Catholic University

“She was my shelter and my storm.” With these words in the opening pages of her memoir, Arundhati Roy unfurls a narrative of extraordinary filial bonds that renders trite those therapeutic memoirs of family dysfunction scattered across the publishing world.

Even Philip Larkin’s memorable poem beginning with, “They f..k you up, your mum and dad,” does not come close, though Roy’s anger is recognisable in these lines with which Larkin’s poem ends: “Get out as early as you can / And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Review: Mother Mary Comes to Me – Arundhati Roy (Penguin Random House)

Roy walked away from her abusive maternal home in Kerala at the age of 17. While training as an architect in Delhi she did not see her mother for the next seven years. She also never had children. When her lover’s young daughters ask her if she is their new mother, she quickly disavows her role and requests they call her “Noonie,” a word from a folk song in Massey Sahib, the film in which Roy acted in her early twenties.

Roy’s memoir is a powerful rendition of her mother, Mary Roy, who terrifies her children and compels them to find their place in the world bereft of the push and pull of natal intimacy. Yet when Mary dies, Roy feels orphaned at the loss of her novelistic subject, that “unpredictable, irreplaceable spark of mad genius”.

Mary remains a formal “Mrs Roy” to her daughter except when she is terminally ill. Arundhati Roy calls her “Kochamma” then. Little Mother.

The work captures in its early pages the terror of living with a formidable parent who rages against motherhood, and who makes it very clear Arundhati was an unwanted second child, the one who barely escaped being aborted by a wire hanger.

But Mrs Roy, the divorcee with an alcoholic ex, and a single mother shunned even by her own family, was also a pioneering educator and feminist icon. Mary Roy established an experimental coeducational school in Kottayam in the southern Indian state of Kerala at a time when such women-led enterprises were unheard of. Her life revolved around the school and her office was her home.

Arundhati and her brother Lalith lived in the dorms with other pupils. Mrs Roy, who suffered from debilitating asthma attacks, revelled in the veneration of her pupils and devoted staff even as she showed no mercy when they erred or failed to meet her needs.

A few comic scenes in the memoir revolve around these acolytes. One is described as a “frightened minion carrying her asthma inhaler as though it were a crown or a sceptre”.

As a child, Arundhati was so afraid she would be held responsible for Mrs Roy’s death if she suffered a fatal asthma attack she found herself breathing for her mother, becoming a “valiant organ-child”.

School and home merged in the early years of the children’s upbringing. They had no sanctuary against hard discipline and no privacy in which to cry in shame. For Arundhati, living with Mrs Roy was like picking her way through a

minefield without a map. My feet and fingers and sometimes even my head were often blown off, but after floating around untethered for a while, they would magically reattach themselves.

Before their life within the confines of the school, the children had roamed wild in their ancestral village of Ayemenem, memories of which Roy celebrates vividly in her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things.

Blowing up the gilded cage

The memoir alternates between vignettes of Mrs Roy’s excruciating cruelty towards Arundhati and her brother, and her astonishing courage in challenging the norms of the patriarchal Syrian Christian community that chewed her up and threw her out like roughage.

Mary Roy’s own childhood in an abusive home where her entomologist father beat her and her mother – routinely throwing them out of the house in the dark of the night – sharpened her determination to take on the entire legal establishment decades later. She challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 that denied daughters from the Syrian Christian community their rightful share of inheritances.

In 1986 she won a landmark case in the Supreme Court of India that gave Mary and countless other women in Kerala their inheritance rights. Mary’s brother and her widowed mother, who had once threatened to evict her from their family cottage when she was a young, single mother, experienced Mrs Roy’s delayed wrath when they were forced into penury by her action.

The memoir also cuts a swathe through the Arundhati Roy’s dual authorial self: screenplay writer and renowned novelist and activist-writer of narrative non-fiction. We get a fascinating backstage tour of her evolution as a writer, a lover, a friend, and a political conscience-keeper on the global stage – currently the bête noire of India’s right-wing government.

Roy famously shunned her bird-in-a-golden-cage celebrity status after The God of Small Things won the Booker in 1997. At the turn of the millennium, she observed with dread the rise of the Hindu Right in her beloved country, especially the euphoria around India’s creation of the nuclear bomb in 1998. In 2001 she published her soul-stirring essay on 9/11, The Algebra of Infinite Justice.

What followed was an intimate and often precarious engagement with some of the iconic grassroots movements in contemporary India: the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement (Save the Narmada River), which opposed the building of a huge dam that would inundate the Narmada valley and destroy the habitation of millions across four Indian states and the Maoist Naxalites in India’s heartland, who engaged in guerrilla warfare to protect tribal lands from vast mining conglomerates.

In 2024, due to her advocacy on behalf of the Kashmiri people caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan, the Modi government threatened to prosecute Roy under a draconian law reserved for anti-national activities.

Read more:
The prosecution of Arundhati Roy is business as usual for the Modi government – and bad news for freedom of expression in India

We begin to understand Roy’s intrepid embrace of danger, her shunning of domestic security and career comforts when she, at her most disarming, reveals to the reader that she cannot seem to help it.

With a childhood that felt like living on the edge of a ledge from which a fall was inevitable at any moment, she has grown accustomed to precarity. For years after The God of Small Things, she writes,

I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I travelled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-writer. Free woman. Free Writing. Like Mother Mary taught me. I hadn’t just avoided the gilded age. I had blown it to smithereens.

Mary Roy’s volatility also helped incubate Arundhati’s novelistic self, a self that could stand apart and assess the turbulence around her. Towards the end of her memoir, she confesses that while she could never quite anticipate her mother’s changeable moods, she had learned “to stand outside the range of their clawing, lashing fury”.

‘Read this as you would a novel’

Some of the most compelling passages in the memoir are about Arundhati Roy’s quest for what she calls her prey, a grazing language-animal she struggled to find for ages.

Language, she claims, was rarely her friend, rarely amenable to taming. When she arrives at the realisation that she is ready to devote herself to The God of Small Things, she writes, “I knew then that I had hunted down my language-animal. I had disembowelled it and drunk its inky blood.”

Her language-animal has surrendered yet again to the power of her claw-pen. In Mother Mary Comes to Me, Roy’s novelistic self appears in full command as she steers the flow of rage, outrage, wonder, sorrow and joy with just the right touch, and at just the right moment, each time it threatens to overwhelm the narrative.

In her wry, inimitable style she writes,

most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination [..] so read this book as you would a novel. It makes no larger claim.

Not surprisingly, the magical alchemy of The God of Small Things reemerges at startling moments in this work. Unforgettable characters, images, turn of phrase, and the coruscating rhythm of the prose, remind us why Roy remains an indubitable literary force almost three decades after her blockbuster first novel.

Debjani Ganguly has received funding from the ARC and the Mellon and Chiang Ching Kuo Foundations.

– ref. Magical alchemy: Arundhati Roy’s compelling memoir illuminates a ‘restless, unruly’ life – https://theconversation.com/magical-alchemy-arundhati-roys-compelling-memoir-illuminates-a-restless-unruly-life-262506

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Sarah Wilson, PhD Candidate in Emerging Technologies Governance, Institue for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Last month, courts on both sides of the Atlantic delivered a clear verdict: when classifying titanium dioxide as carcinogenic, regulatory agencies had overreached.

These parallel legal defeats expose deeper questions about who gets to interpret contested science.

In the modern world, legal decisions – especially ones dealing with regulation – are increasingly based on complex science. But sometimes, the science isn’t settled. When certainty remains elusive, who gets to be the authority?

The case of titanium dioxide

Titanium dioxide lies at the heart of the recent legal challenges. It’s a white mineral powder used in many everyday products such as paint, sunscreen, toothpaste and even food.

For decades, titanium dioxide was considered safe. However, in the early 2000s, with the advent of nanomaterials science, it became widely available in nanoparticle form. And scientists found that typical titanium dioxide powder contains some nanoparticles too.

Research emerged showing these tiny titanium dioxide particles may interact with biological systems differently compared with their larger counterparts. This sparked controversy about a substance previously thought to be safe.

The turning point came in 2010, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified titanium dioxide as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. This means there’s limited evidence for human carcinogenicity, but there could be some evidence from animal studies, or simply evidence that the substance has the characteristics of a carcinogen.

Read more:
Does this cause cancer? How scientists determine whether a chemical is carcinogenic – sometimes with controversial results

In the case of titanium dioxide, the classification was primarily based on studies in rats. The animals had more lung tumours when they breathed in high concentrations of titanium dioxide particles.

Naturally, regulators responded. California added airborne titanium dioxide of certain particle sizes to its Proposition 65 list in 2011. This meant products with it, such as spray-on sunscreens and cosmetic powders, would need warning labels.

Eight years later, the European Commission also classified titanium dioxide powder as a suspected carcinogen. This resulted in mandatory warning labels on products with titanium dioxide powder sold in Europe.

Decisive – or not so much?

A warning label might seem decisive. However, beneath it lies a profound scientific uncertainty. It’s a common challenge with emerging fields such as nanoscience.

For titanium dioxide, the uncertainty manifested in two ways.

First, as with many suspected carcinogens, the IARC classification ignited debate within the scientific community. Could animal study results meaningfully predict human cancer risk? Animal studies often demonstrate a strong mechanism for harm, but it’s not possible to test directly in humans. That makes it tricky to establish cause and effect.

Read more:
If ‘correlation doesn’t imply causation’, how do scientists figure out why things happen?

Second, studies on nano titanium dioxide toxicity continue to yield inconsistent and contradictory findings. Current research shows toxicity heavily depends on several factors, from exposure to individual susceptibility.

Evidence in the courts

The scientific complexity on titanium dioxide created fertile ground for legal challenges. Industry groups contested both “carcinogenic” rulings, arguing regulators had misinterpreted the science.

The courts ultimately agreed. On August 1 2025, Europe’s highest court sided with the titanium dioxide industry. It found European regulators had failed to consider all relevant factors when assessing scientific evidence.

This ruling hinged on something highly technical. The courts found regulators had used an incorrect particle density value when calculating lung overload in rat studies. This undermined their assessment of whether the animal data reliably predicted human cancer risk. The court nullified the classification entirely.

Similarly, on August 12 2025, a US federal court struck down warning requirements for titanium dioxide in cosmetics.

While acknowledging the warnings were technically accurate sentence-by-sentence, the court found the underlying science didn’t meet the established legal standard of being “purely factual and uncontroversial”.

In part, the warnings were deemed “controversial” because significant scientific debate persists.

The legal landscape is changing

These court rulings represent a critical evolution in regulatory science.

In their initial classification decisions, the US and European agencies prioritised precaution. They recognised that animal studies typically come before human evidence, and that research on nano titanium dioxide was still emerging.

They followed the proper established processes and made reasonable decisions under uncertainty.

In both cases, the courts used legal knowledge standards to reject these scientific applications. This blurs the boundary between science and how courts oversee regulatory processes.

Critics argue courts “are not scientists” and lack the expertise to make these types of decisions. Judges are trained for legal complexity and shouldn’t replace the decisions of trained scientific committees in areas of scientific uncertainty.

When courts and science intertwine

Rulings such as the ones on titanium dioxide raise several important questions for our legal system.

How much do judges really understand science? Should judges be able to override trained scientists to resolve technical disputes? Or does judicial oversight effectively balance against regulatory overreach in complex scientific contexts?

When should regulators act on complex science? Since the 1950s, many toxic substances present this dilemma: controlled human studies are unethical, and widespread exposure eliminates the unexposed control groups needed for comparison. Should agencies wait for definitive proof – which may not be possible to obtain – or act on evidence of potential harm to protect public health?

Can scientists effectively communicate uncertainty? Emerging science is in a constant state of uncertainty. By contrast, legal systems require definitive decisions within specific timeframes. When scientific consensus is lacking, how can scientists help regulators and courts proceed?

These questions aren’t just about interpreting science. As complex technologies continue to be integrated into our daily lives, scientific uncertainty could increasingly become a legal concern. How do we make sure our legal institutions are up to the task?

This is a big challenge, but one thing is clear: scientific and legal experts must work together to find the solution.

Rachael Wakefield-Rann receives research funding from various government and non-government organisations. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would financially benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

Sarah Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Court rulings increasingly demand scientific certainty – but that’s not always possible – https://theconversation.com/court-rulings-increasingly-demand-scientific-certainty-but-thats-not-always-possible-264991

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Philip Johnson, Lecturer, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

In the past few weeks, the United States military has been involved in multiple fatal strikes on boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela.

The first airstrike was on September 5 and killed 11 people. The second occurred this week, killing three people. No efforts were made to apprehend the vessels or identify the people before the strikes.

President Donald Trump has claimed the boats and the people on them were trafficking illegal drugs bound for the US, dubbing them “narcoterrorists”.

The White House has provided little detail about the attacks in general, and no evidence the boats were trafficking drugs. It’s possible they weren’t.

Here’s what’s going on in the region and what might happen next.

Why is this happening now?

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to crack down on immigration from Latin America.

He often drew a connection between crime and immigration, especially from Haiti and Venezuela (though some of the cases of gang crime he cited have since been questioned or debunked).

Once in office, Trump declared a number of gangs as terrorist organisations, including one Venezuelan group, Tren de Aragua.

The Trump government has claimed that Venezuelans deported from the US were members of Tren de Aragua, often without much substantial evidence.

Trump has also entertained the idea of using the US military to target criminal groups.

This is now reality, through a large military buildup deploying multiple warships, submarines and fighter jets to the Caribbean.

A tumultuous history

This is the latest chapter in a long and sometimes hostile relationship between Venezuela and the US.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, affording the country political and economic influence within the region. This has made Venezuela a valued ally, and sometimes a competitor, to the United States.

But for the past two decades or so, relations have been more antagonistic.

When left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez was in power in Venezuela in 2002, the US was accused of giving tacit approval to a coup attempt against him.

America has also imposed economic sanctions against the country since 2005. These particularly ramped up under Trump’s first administration against Chavez’s successor and current president, Nicolas Maduro.

While less popular than his predecessor, Maduro remains extremely powerful. US attempts to destabilise his government, including one in 2019, have been unsuccessful.

Although many in Venezuela would welcome a change of government, any US intervention in the region is likely to be immensely unpopular. It provides a nationalist rallying point for Maduro: a way to boost his local support.

What do we know about the gang?

Trump claims both boats were operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.

The group started in Venezuelan prisons before spreading across other Latin American countries, primarily through people fleeing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

Estimates of the size of the gang are contested and hard to measure, but best guesses put it at around 5,000 members.

Tren de Aragua members have been identified in 16 US states, but there has been little conclusive evidence of large-scale criminal or terrorist activity. In New York, Tren de Aragua has primarily been associated with retail theft.

Why is the US bombing boats?

Destroying individual boats is unlikely to have an impact on drug trafficking into the US. Most fentanyl, for example, is trafficked into the US over land borders by US citizens.

However, bombing the boats does reinforce the idea of an existential threat to the United States that can only be defeated with violence. The same sense of threat is used to justify the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to brutal prisons in El Salvador.

The Venezuelan government is of less concern to Trump. Indeed, the White House has authorised increased imports of Venezuelan oil in recent weeks.

Others within the US government are more committed to regime change in Venezuela. For Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the military operations are a direct effort to destabilise what he sees as an illegitimate Venezuelan regime.

Is it legal?

These airstrikes are the first unilateral US military action in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989.

However, the military operations fit within a much longer history of overt and covert intervention in the region.

Scholars have said the decision to attack the boats was likely illegal under the law of the sea.

The US government justifies the attack in the broadest terms: Venezuelan gangs traffic drugs that can kill American citizens, therefore any violence is warranted to prevent this. This is an argument not about legality, but urgent security.

Impunity is the larger point, a display of power in itself. After the first strike, Vice President JD Vance declared “I don’t give a shit what you call it”.

Trump and Rubio have both asserted the strikes will continue, without concern for the possibility that they could be considered war crimes.

Without a clear prospect of legal jeopardy, the strikes will remain available as a way to project US power. The strikes will likely stop, or pause, when the government wants to claim that it has achieved some victory.

Philip Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. US strikes on Venezuelan ‘drug boats’ have killed 14 people. What is Trump trying to do? – https://theconversation.com/us-strikes-on-venezuelan-drug-boats-have-killed-14-people-what-is-trump-trying-to-do-265481

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jenny Cooney, Lecturer in Lifestyle Journalism, Monash University

When Robert Redford launched the Utah-based Sundance Institute in 1981, providing an independent support system for filmmakers named after his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), it would transform Hollywood and become his biggest legacy.

Redford, who has passed away age 89, was already a huge movie icon when he bought land and created a non-profit space with a mission statement “to foster independent voices, champion risky, original stories, and cultivate a community for artists to create and thrive globally”.

Starting with labs, fellowships, grants and mentoring programs for independent filmmakers, he finally decided to launch his own film festival in nearby Park City, Utah in 1985.

“The labs were absolutely the most important part of Sundance and that is still the core of what we are and what we do today,” Redford reflected during my last sit-down with him in 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival, while promoting his own indie, All is Lost.

After the program had been running for five years, he told me

I realised we had succeeded in doing that much, but now there was nowhere for them to go. So, I thought, ‘well, what if we created a festival, where at least we can bring the filmmakers together to look at each other’s work and then we could create a community for them?’ And then, to my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination.

That’s putting it mildly. An astonishing list of filmmakers can all thank Redford for their career breakthroughs. Alumni of the Sundance Institute include Bong Joon-ho (who workshopped early scripts at Sundance labs before Parasite), Chloé Zhao and Taika Waititi, who often returns as a mentor.

First films that debuted at the festival include Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), Steve Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Richard Linklater’s Slackers (2002), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1993), Nicole Holofcener’s short film Angry (1991), Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998) and Damian Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014).

Australian films which recently made their Sundance debut include Noora Niasari’s Shayda (2023), Daina Reid’s Run, Rabbit, Run (2023) and Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa (2025).

Read more:
A pretty face helped make Robert Redford a star. Talent and dedication kept him one

Creating a haven

For anyone lucky enough to have attended Sundance in the early days, it was a haven for indie filmmakers. It was not uncommon to see “Bob”, as he was always known in person, walking down the main street on his way to a movie premiere or a dinner with young filmmakers eager for his advice.

Watching Redford portray Bob Woodward in the Watergate thriller All the President’s Men (1976) was one of my earliest inspirations for pursuing a career in journalism. Also, nurturing a crush since The Sting (1973) and The Way We Were (1973) made it hard not to be intimidated crossing paths with him in Park City.

Bob, however, quickly made you forget the icon status. Soon, you’d just be chatting about a new filmmaker he was excited to support, or his environmental work (he served as a trustee for five decades on the non-profit organisation, Natural Resources Defense Council).

Everyone felt equal in that indie film world, and Redford was responsible for that atmosphere.

In 1994, I waited in a Main Street coffee shop for Elle MacPherson to ski off a mountain and do an interview promoting her acting role in the Australian film Sirens. Later that day, I commiserated over a hot chocolate with Hugh Grant as he complained about frostbitten toes from wearing the wrong shoes and finding himself trekking through a snowstorm to the first screening of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In the early days, Sundance was a destination for film lovers, not hair and makeup people, inappropriately glamorous designer gowns or swag lounges.

The arrival of Hollywood

But eventually, there was no denying the clout of any film making it to Sundance, and Hollywood came knocking.

“In 1985, we only had one theatre and maybe there were four or five restaurants in town, so it was a much quieter, smaller place and over time it grew so incredibly the atmosphere changed,” Redford reflected during our interview.

Suddenly all these people came in to leverage off our festival and because we are a non-profit, we couldn’t do anything about it. We had what we called ‘ambush mongers’ coming in to sell their wares and give out swag and I’m sure there will always be those people, but we are strong enough to resist being overtaken by it.

The festival resisted but the infrastructure gave in. In 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will finally relocate to Boulder, Colorado after a careful selection process aimed at ensuring the spirit of Sundance remains.

Redford stepped back from being the public face of the festival in 2019, dedicating himself instead to spend more time with filmmakers and their projects. But he supported the move to Colorado, and said in his statement of the announcement

Words cannot express the sincere gratitude I have for Park City, the state of Utah, and all those in the Utah community that have helped to build the organization.

The spirit of Sundance lives on, but it just won’t be the same without Bob on the streets or in the movie theatres.

Jenny Cooney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘To my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination’: Robert Redford’s Sundance legacy – https://theconversation.com/to-my-happy-surprise-it-grew-beyond-my-imagination-robert-redfords-sundance-legacy-265478

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than 48,000 stranded, and wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed at least 16,000 homes and other buildings.

Events such as these signal what climate scientists have long warned: climate-related extremes are becoming more frequent and intense.

Poor housing can leave us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So in today’s warming world, it’s increasingly important our homes and our housing system are climate resilient. This means they must protect us from heatwaves, floods and bushfires, and keep out air pollutants. And the housing system must function to provide affordable and secure housing.

Location is important too. Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, released this week, estimates 8.7% of residential buildings are in very high-risk areas (prone to hazards). This proportion is projected to increase to 13.5% by 2090 in a scenario with a high global warming level.

Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a new paper published in the Lancet Public Health, my colleagues and I identify several ways climate change affects our homes, and in turn, our health.

On a basic level, housing shields us from the elements. But when we look at the bigger picture, resilient housing and housing systems have a key role to play in helping us face the challenges of climate change.

How does climate change affect our homes and our health?

Climate change can lead to deterioration in the indoor conditions in our homes.

For example, extreme temperatures can compromise air quality by making building materials more likely to degrade and generate pollutants. Particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants from bushfire smoke can infiltrate indoor environments. Both of these processes can contribute to poor indoor air quality. This is not to mention that extreme heat outside can lead to unbearable temperatures indoors.

Meanwhile, floods, storms and cyclones can cause structural and water damage to homes. This can expose occupants to toxins, for example from contaminated water, and increase the risk of allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and infectious diseases (such as water-borne and mosquito-borne diseases).

Read more:
Eradicating mould would save millions in health-care costs: how our homes affect our health

Climate change and housing security

The risks associated with climate change can also influence housing security and affordability.

Both housing insecurity and unaffordability are significant predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing, and both are already significant problems independent of climate change.

But a changing climate exacerbates these problems. Equally, the housing crisis leaves us more vulnerable to climate change.

Climate-related disasters put a strain on housing costs and general cost-of-living pressures. Residents may need to pay for maintenance and repairs alongside their mortgages and rental payments. Meanwhile, increasing extreme weather events push insurance premiums higher. All this puts pressure on housing affordability.

Extreme temperatures also increase the risk of energy poverty. Not being able to adequately heat or cool a home can negatively affect both physical and mental health for its occupants.

What’s more, climate-related disasters can drive forced relocation, with flow-on effects to health and wellbeing through disruption to family life, loss of income, gender-based violence, social disconnection, and reduced access to services.

Notably, the effects of climate change reduce the supply of affordable housing, especially affordable rentals, which are more likely to be damaged or lost from hazards, for example due to lower structural quality. Lower-income renters as a result find it harder to compete for the remaining stock.

There are also other examples showing the effects of climate change on housing are inequitable, with the consequences flowing disproportionately to less advantaged groups.

When areas with low climate risk become more desirable, this can drive up housing and other costs in an area. Climate “gentrification” can displace low-income households to higher risk and less protected areas. We’ve seen this happen in countries including the United States and Denmark.

What does climate-resilient housing look like?

Housing needs to protect people from the growing risks posed by climate change. In a physical sense, this means it must be robust enough to bear more intense weather conditions, be energy efficient, and have good thermal performance that allows for both ventilation and climate control.

To achieve this, climate-resilient housing should include features such as:

• well-constructed foundations, walls and roofs
• ventilation and insulation
• energy-efficient cooling and heating
• exterior shading and roof reflectivity
• building materials that are fire- and heat-resistant.

Building codes need to be cognisant of the changing climate, while existing housing may need to be upgraded.

We’ve seen some signs of progress. For example, updates to the National Construction Code in recent years have accounted for the increasing impact of climate change, by raising energy efficiency and thermal performance standards, among other measures.

There is also a need for stronger tenant protection policies. Rental housing is disproportionately of poor quality, yet it houses a large portion of the more vulnerable people in the population. Minimum standards for rental housing must be climate resilient.

But housing people well isn’t just a question of the physical construction of homes.

Climate-resilient housing should be affordable, secure and provide residents the chance to access opportunities for work, education and social connection that sustain wellbeing.

So much public discussion has focused on the need to meet housing supply targets, but we can’t forget that people need to be housed well to flourish.

This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.

Ang Li receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health – https://theconversation.com/heat-air-quality-insurance-costs-how-climate-change-is-affecting-our-homes-and-our-health-263278

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

If you could, would you pay to live forever? Some Silicon Valley billionaires aren’t just making tech products – they’ve set their sights on immortality.

Social media is flooded with influencers promoting peptides, “functional” mushroom powders and other (often non-evidence-based) hacks said to maximise your lifespan. Some even claim to reverse your “biological age”.

The quest to live longer, look younger or just live one’s “best life” has become a booming industry, encompassing treatments as diverse as ice baths, saunas, cryotherapy chambers and even red light therapy.

But behind much of the marketing and social media posts are commercial interests willing to cater to a population fearful of ageing and dying.

Nobody lives forever

The key reason humans aren’t immortal hinges on evolution. This process favours genetic traits promoting successful reproduction and adaptation over those promoting unlimited lifespan for individuals.

The ancient Greeks told cautionary tales about life extension. Those who reached for immortality mostly found this came at a terrible cost. The mythical Tithonus, for example, was doomed to endless ageing and decline after being granted eternal life without eternal youth.

Fast forward to today, the longevity industry has the backing of venture capital funds, celebrity investors and pharmaceutical companies.

But much of this money is being funnelled into products and services with little or no evidence for how they actually improve health or lengthen lifespan.

In his well-publicised quest for life extension, US venture capitalist Bryan Johnson reportedly spends millions and undergoes constant medical testing with the impossible aim of never dying.

Johnson’s longevity regimen includes a hyper-controlled diet, hundreds of daily supplements and strict sleep and exercise routines. He has even received transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma.

We see three major problems with the longevity industry that are a cause for concern.

Profit before evidence

Innovation is central to the longevity industry, attracting an influx of Silicon Valley investors seeking to “hack” the ageing process. Yet, these innovations are infrequently backed by high-quality evidence.

For example, full-body MRI is marketed as a way to identify cancer and other abnormalities early before they are harder to treat. Yet, there is no evidence these scans improve health outcomes. Medical colleges around the world do not recommend full-body MRI in healthy individuals.

Tests like these can lead to “incidentalomas” – unexpected findings that may prompt unnecessary follow-up procedures, costs and anxiety.

The longevity industry pitches itself as a disruptive alternative to mainstream health care. But it still depends on that system to function. Scans, blood tests and experimental treatments inevitably flow back into hospitals and clinics for follow-up, specialist consultations and interventions.

This puts added strain on already stretched services – both financially and in terms of workforce – while arguably delivering little benefit to population health.

Test and you shall find

Despite widespread public enthusiasm for screening tests, experts have long warned more testing does not always lead to better health.

One of the clearest risks is overdiagnosis – when an abnormality or disease is diagnosed that will never impact a person’s health during their lifetime. The more you test, the more you’ll find – much of it clinically irrelevant. This creates a self-affirming cycle.

Unnecessary investigations can result in overdiagnosis, incidental findings and potentially cascades of further unnecessary procedures or tests.

Read more:
We analysed almost 1,000 social media posts about 5 popular medical tests. Most were utterly misleading

Longevity isn’t the same as prevention

Marketers of longevity claim their services and products are part of “preventive” medicine: spotting disease before it strikes and keeping people healthier for longer.

But the longevity movement differs drastically from the public health principle of prevention.

Prevention, in mainstream medicine, is about simple, evidence-based measures. This includes immunisations and screening for cancer at the right ages.

But there’s no clear evidence many of the exhaustive tests and treatments the longevity industry promotes improve long-term outcomes for otherwise healthy people.

They simply cost a lot of money, are resource intensive and may lead to further unnecessary testing.

Why this matters

By medicalising ageing, the longevity movement is a classic example of disease mongering. It also risks embedding ageism into everyday commerce – pathologising normal ageing rather than accepting it as part of life.

It also risks diverting attention and resources away from important and basic public health system functions that can improve quality of life for millions as we all gracefully age.

The hype around many unfounded longevity claims distracts us from what we already know works: regular exercise, healthy food, sound sleep, meaningful relationships and fair access to evidence-based medical treatment.

Samuel Cornell receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Brooke Nickel receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is on the Executive Committee for Wiser Healthcare and the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference.

Sean Docking does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A booming longevity industry wants to sell us ‘immortality’. There could be hidden costs – https://theconversation.com/a-booming-longevity-industry-wants-to-sell-us-immortality-there-could-be-hidden-costs-264879