Let's talk about the weather

Normally, drawing room meteorology is a light exercise in pleasantries — ‘What high humidity! Do have some more tea.’ However, the stock phrases once used for the climate were in fact humanity’s homage to the Holocene, the last 11,700 years when climatic conditions became stable. With predictable weather, humans could establish rhythms, of crops being sown and harvests celebrated, dwellings set up and cities initiated, enabling us to settle down, accumulate resources, embellish our relationships and create.

Today, global warming is changing all that. Driven by anthropogenic or human causes — since 1850, the world has emitted over 2,500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) — climate change has literally entered our homes as gasp-inducing heat and bone-drenching rain. The atmospheric impacts of greenhouse gases have been unimaginable — wrapping themselves around Earth, they’ve halted its natural methods of letting off heat into space and cooling, causing warming instead of over 1.1ºC since 1850. This has skewed Earth’s balances of heat, cold and rain — as the Copernicus Programme finds, 2023’s record surge in global temperature of 1.48ºC drove extreme weather events, even creating climate refugees.

However, while the science of climate change is straight, its politics is not. Global warming isn’t just a story of atmospheric imbalances — it is also a chronicle of skewed power. It is the tragedy of colonialism when resources were ripped from conquered lands, the inequity of capitalism, where the production of tin and tinsel, profiting a few, pollute soil, air and sea for everybody, and a mockery of justice, when those responsible for warming won’t compensate those suffering its ravages. Voices echo on this stage, from indigenous people whose regard for Earth has been brutally razed to the young who fear an inheritance of loss. At times, climate change seems such an overwhelming entity, few discuss its core realities.

And yet, dear reader, we need to talk about the weather. Once upon a time, a hopeful pop song exhorted us to discuss intimacy, trilling, ‘Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.’ As Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise now, let’s discuss climate politics, not simply to assign blame, but to tap into humanity’s greatest forces — cooperation and ingenuity — to allay this existential crisis. Join Times Evoke in tracking climate politics — it’s Earth’s most important news story.

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