Australia is one of the world's biggest consumers of beef per capita, its main export is coal, and cars are an entrenched aspect of Australian culture, despite Australia' status as one of the world's most urbanized societies. However, Australia also has a strong conservation movement history, there is an acute awareness that the Australian environment is in constant crisis mode as a consequence of global warming (the Murray-Darling river system has for years been on the brink of collapse, bushfires have become increasingly hazardous to mention two aspects which have received international attention). In Tim Flannery and Peter Singer, Australia has two prominent intellectuals with a high international profile in the climate change debate. Their proposals to deal with climate change are simultaneously global in scope and national in focus.  My paper will examine how Australia, as simultaneously a Western nation, and a not quite Western nation, responds culturally to the challenges global warming poses.