The rubble and wreckage of 12,000 structures reduced to ash; white-suited operatives picking through the possessions of the many thousands more whose lives are ruined. Recent images from California show that 2025 – following on from a yet another “hottest year on record”, and topping off a decade of unprecedented heat – will form the stage for a superlative display from a climate crisis that is already happening. This January was already the hottest on record, to the confusion and dismay of climate scientists who had expected this year to be slightly cooler.
Yet around the world, climate change action is under threat, and not just with a denier back in the White House. Nigel Farage and Liz Truss recently attended the UK launch of “Heartland” – the US climate change-denying lobby group, self-described as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”. Farage’s Reform UK, the most popular party in the country according to one poll this week, has done its utmost to turn the goal of “net zero” into a rhetorical obscenity, labelling it “lunacy” and “insanity”.
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