Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter . The satellite images are at once mesmerizing and horrifying . A vast arc of fire blazes across the rim of the land; a cone of heat encases a whole continent; a veil of smoke shrouds the ocean and will soon circle the globe . This season’s catastrophic bush fires in Australia have scorched roughly 20 million acres of the country, killed at least 25 people and, according to some staggering estimates , led to the death of a billion animals. Videos of singed kangaroos and parched koalas prompted an outpouring of grief on social media. Where the fires have been quelled, a blackened desolation remains, with thousands of homes lost and communities uprooted. Survivors and eyewitnesses spoke of an […]