AS 2021 ends, there are hopeful signs the two-year-old coronavirus pandemic may be moving to a less dangerous and more manageable phase, with the highly transmissible but less dangerous omicron variant supplanting the previous strain of concern, delta.
As Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Commonwealth chief medical officer Paul Kelly acknowledged after yesterday's emergency National Cabinet meeting, case numbers in Australia will continue to rise.
Some of the increased transmission may even have its roots in the measures agreed to at the meeting, which are designed to keep the nation moving where possible, based on a growing body of scientific evidence confirming omicron as a mild illness, at worst, for most recipients.
The next few weeks will tell how this recalibration of Australia's COVID response plays out.
But in looking back on the year that was, it is evident that COVID has taken so much of the world's energy that few issues have been able to compete for space beside it.
One concern that did hold the public's attention was climate change, specifically the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and the various policy pledges that emerged in response to November's COP26 climate summit.
From a global perspective, the Glasgow gathering heaped even more pressure on coal as the practical and symbolic enemy of a movement to end fossil fuels in favour of new technologies built around hydrogen.
Closer to home, people power pressed the PM to please the environmentalists by blocking a renewal of the PEP-11 exploration area off the Hunter coast.
At the same time, the Commonwealth-owned Snowy Hydro won approval for its controversial Kurri Kurri gas turbine - a symbol of the deep divide in opinion over the merits of gas as a "transitional" fuel.
The other big issue of 2021 was China, or, more accurately, the tensions between China and a Western world - including Australia - that subscribes to the US-dominated "rule of law" that has underwritten global relations since WWII.
Coal was an issue here, too, although a year of skyrocketing prices more than offset China's trade war on Australian exports.
As a region and a nation we survived 2021 as best we could.
For many, that will have been achievement enough.
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