‘The canary in the coalmine’ is an overworked phrase, but has its used-by date really expired? One might insist, its time is now. But not as a means to keep noting the impact, measuring the fallout, counting the losses. But as a call to action, as plaintive as the cry of the bush stone-curlew, as commanding as the call of the crow.

This book is overtly anti-racist and is all about conserving ecologies, and it acknowledges the colonialism of natural history, but it also is entirely inside what it critiques. It’s the most bizarre contradiction I've encountered in decades of critical writing, reviewing and activism.

We are at a crossroads where gas could be locked into the energy grid for the coming decades. We could combine investment in renewable energy to decarbonise manufacturing jobs, and regulate the industry to ensure that more gas stays in Australia. But the choice is likely to be obfuscated as a single pathway: one more silver bullet, one more rush for gas.

Perhaps we must become reconciled to the fact that, as much as we would like to see ourselves as part of nature, to look at a tree and see it as one of us, the fact remains that to entire ecosystems it is we who are the octopus. We are Cthulhu, the primordial horror and existential threat.

We need to engage with scale. We need to keep thinking that the loss of a million animals is a terrible tragedy that must be avoided at all costs. We must also realise that the loss of a billion animals is not the same. It’s a thousand times worse.