The slow cancellation of the future is finally itself undergoing cancellation, disappearing from view. This formerly all-pervasive cultural mood has been robbed of its soporific power by the recent intrusion of queasy possibility, the reminder that, as the old song says, anything could happen and it could be right now.

If the conceit of post-history was that we have achieved a liberal capitalist paradise, the definitive burial of the future has been heralded in recent culture by an obsession with the afterlife.

A couple of Thursdays ago, the Queensland government quietly extinguished the Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owners’ native title over 1385 hectares of land that includes the Carmichael mine site. Families have been camped on the land near the mine site, anticipating forced removals.

So if Crowe’s right, it’s not just ‘big ideas and ambitious plans’ that are dead to our politicians. It’s also, according to the best available science, a great chunk of life on Earth, with neither major party even trying to put forward the measures necessary to end extinctions. That’s a bleak conclusion – but, in a way, it’s a bracing one since it clarifies, in the starkest possible fashion, the strategic perspectives in front of us.

But they’re symptomatic of our contempt for the coast. We ‘love’ the beach because of whatever enjoyment we can squeeze out of it (free swims, warmth, Instagram fodder) and godspeed to anything – endangered species, for example – that stands in the way.

‘New York Millennial can’t afford to move to DC before her job in Congress starts’ read a recent headline in VICE for an article on how Congressmember-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn’t yet afford to move to Washington DC, as the rents in the city are so high. Not a week goes by without a media report revealing how difficult it is for young people to afford a house; simultaneously, we’re inundated by articles on disgustingly wealthy baby-boomers.

1. Our fiction and poetry readers are humans. And in fact, we’re looking for more (to help us read through submissions and select the work that Overland goes on to publish. Interested? Read on.)

Since Bob Hawke and Paul Keating implemented the Australian version of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 90s, there has been a broad consensus between the Labor and Liberal parties on the basic fundamentals of the Australian economy. This consensus has been a major root of two crises in Australia – one political, one economic.

But why should the climate crisis be so unthinkable for literary fiction?

With Karl Marx’s 200th birthday tomorrow, 5 May, we are likely to be reminded once again that communism has failed. But really, this whole jolly business just confirms his theories.

An increase in leisure time – once a central goal of the labour movement – is sorely needed in western societies. In Australia, working hours for full-time employees increased throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and have only declined slightly since, despite significant increases in productivity. To add insult to injury, workers’ real wages in Australia are no longer rising in line with increased output.

The ancient Egyptians venerated the ibis. Followers of ibis cults would visit temples and purchase mummified ibises for use in votive offerings. The ibis was a sacred bird associated with creation and fertility and knowledge and learning. The ibis cults became so wildly popular that priests began breeding and rearing the birds onsite, specially for mummification.

Artist Sofia Sabbagh on the volunteers helping track the environmental toll of Victoria’s logging practices.

It seems the Greens don’t do politics so differently after all.

The danger lies in seeing Trump or Brexit as an aberration, rather than a reaction to and by-product of liberalism. The received wisdom is that liberalism is somehow virtuous and inherently good. But this formulation makes it impossible to understand why politicians saying openly fascistic things are garnering wide support in supposedly principled liberal democracies.

The journalistic model that through several living memories has been our culture’s informational staple is dying. It can’t be trimmed or economised into sustainable health. It won’t be restored through the repatriation of outrageous Fairfax executive salaries and bonuses. It is done. It is over.