Devastating bushfires that blanketed Australia’s largest city with hazardous smoke this week have heightened public anger and raised political pressure on the government to do more to battle climate change. While cooler weather eased fires and haze around Sydney on Wednesday, the previous day’s thick shroud of smoke triggered protests and prompted one conservative lawmaker to break with his party by directly tying recent weather to carbon emissions. “We are in the middle of the worst drought in living memory, this is the second hottest year on record,” New South Wales Environment Minister Matt Kean, from the centre-right Liberal-National coalition, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio. “Yesterday smoke was causing some of the worst air pollution in Sydney that […]