I've written before that Australian is the climate-change canary in the coal mine, due to its longtime dependence on coal. Even though voters recently dumped their pro-coal leader, I'm not sure what they can do at this point to stop these apocalyptic floods. Via the Associated Press:

SYDNEY (AP) — More than 30,000 residents of Sydney and its surrounds were told to evacuate or prepare to abandon their homes Monday as Australia’s largest city faces its fourth, and possibly worst, round of flooding in less than a year and a half.

Days of torrential rain caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a new flood emergency to parts of the city of 5 million people.

“The latest information we have is that there’s a very good chance that the flooding will be worse than any of the other three floods that those areas had in the last 18 months,” Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said.

The current flooding might affect areas that were spared during the previous floods in March last year, March this year and April, Watt added.

We already have flood here and we will need aggressive action in the United States, like mass resettlement of people in high-risk areas, and building up flood gates in urban areas. Can our leaders measure up to the politically-unpopular task?