Over forty years ago, scientists started systematically recording temperatures in locations around the world, precisely two metres above land and sea, to work out the average global temperature.
Last week was the hottest week on record, across the whole world. The wolf of climate catastrophe is visibly tearing through our world.
People are dying in heatwaves in India, as temperatures hit levels the human body can’t survive.
Thirty square miles of Scottish nature reserve was destroyed in wildfires last month. Smoke from over 500 Canadian wildfires is drifting over the United States, with 100 million people on alert for air pollution.
But last week also saw the busiest day ever for flights. Gatwick is applying for permission to create a second runway, at a cost of £500 million. The British government plans to licence over 100 new oil and gas projects and to drop an earlier pledge to spend £11.6 billion on climate and nature projects in developing countries.
Lots of people are shouting about the failure to act on the emergency. They’re interrupting games of snooker, cricket and tennis, disturbing art galleries and board meetings.
You might disagree with their approach, but as Dr Kirsty Sedgman asks in her book On Being Unreasonable, what do you do when ‘you’ve asked nicely and made petitions and done everything right for decades, and still nothing’s changed?
If the world is literally burning, the ice caps melting, loved ones dying, and the people responsible for it all are sitting in an office […]? What’s the reasonable thing to do in circumstances like these?’
If it makes you uncomfortable to see people throwing soup or scattering clouds of orange cornflour, remember that this is an alarm raised to save life as we know it.
Life on earth itself is a statistical improbability. Earth is a ‘Goldilocks planet’ – not too hot or too cold, but ‘just right’ for us.
There’s water in liquid form, and just the right mixture of gases in the atmosphere. What are the chances of that?
If we continue to heat the climate, we will leave the ‘habitable zone’. And we will lose the miraculous human creations that take us beyond mere survival.
That’s why climate protests are taking place not just in parliament but in art, sport and music. Whether it’s the Hammersmith Palais or the Bolshoi Ballet – to quote Ian Drury – it’s all at risk.
I keep listening to Drury’s wonderful ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’: ‘A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it/You’re welcome we can spare it’.
We can and we must.
Eleanor Margolies writes about theatre and on environmental issues, and is an active campaigner for urban green spaces and clean air.
www.eleanormargolies.co.uk @ellanOrnell