It’s not just human beings suffering in the heat, it’s animals and plants of all descriptions. Dogs are being hosed, cats are being fanned, pans of water are going out into backyards to give birds a break.

Healthy creatures will survive, but extreme temperatures can spell doom for the very young, the very old and the sick.

While climate change is making things hotter in some parts of the world, in others, it’s causing flooding and blizzards.

This is because more water is evaporating from the warming ocean, which is then causing more intense “precipitation events”.

For a town like Bathurst, the cooling effects of urban trees will be increasingly important as we adapt to higher temperatures.

The refreshing feeling of a bit of shade is obvious to anyone who steps from the glare of a footpath into the shade cast by a big spreading tree.

As climate change bites, we need healthy street trees, but these, too, are also succumbing to the effects of higher temperatures.

As we’ve noticed in recent months, the elm leaf beetle is having a field day, with longer periods of warmth allowing it to extend its active period of eating and egg-laying before going into winter hibernation.

Council and many private landholders are now treating grand, established elms for elm leaf beetle. But some environmentalists worry about the effects of the chemicals used on other insects, including bees.

The problems of climate change are not simple, and some are counter-intuitive.

The solutions to one problem may cause other unforeseen problems. No wonder people retreat into denial, depression or nihilism (“what’s the point?”).

At the moment I’m reading a dense academic book by the US eco-philosopher Donna Haraway titled Staying With The Trouble. It’s full of very wordy prose but that one idea in the title stands out: we must stay with the trouble.

We need to stay with the trouble even when we make mistakes, when we are uncertain, when we do things that we might have to undo later.

One thing is clear: the more of us willing to be involved, the better the outcome.

While we human beings have landed ourselves in this mess, we are also very good at finding creative ways to solve problems, once we put our minds to it.

Entire populations did it during the Second World War; we can surely do it again.