Australia was caught unprepared and was confronted with its own vulnerability: It became apparent that it did not have enough resources and effective strategies to protect its unique eco-systems.
This phenomenon where we just naturally gravitate towards things that resemble us in some way is called implicit egotism and it's essentially the flip side of what happens when we're confronted with real-life villains.
Lacie is confronted with the truth about her predicament after she experiences a temporary but significant drop in her rating, due to a small incident at the airport.
Because, as I am sitting here, I am confronted with the same problems that they were confronted with: how to get an actor on stage, how to get him off stage, how to develop character, how to shape the scenes.
However, as Kolbert has pointed out, when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it.