At what point do we stop calling it ‘crazy weather’ and start calling it what it is?
Every year seems to bring another record. Another heatwave, flood, wildfire. Antoher storm that ‘nobody could have predicted.’ We talk about the weather as if it’s a force out of our control when really, we’ve been steadily turning up the thermostat on the planet and acting surprise when it retaliates.
A warming planet means more extreme heat, heavier rainfall, rising sea levels, worsening droughts and conditions that can make wildfires and storms more destructive. Hotter oceans provide more energy for storms; warmer air can hold more moisture, and prolonged heat dried out landscapes, increasing the risk of wildfires.
The frightening part is that we are approaching climate tipping points – thresholds beyond which some environmental changes could become self-reinforcing or extremely difficult to reverse. Thawing permafrost, melting ice, and destabilising ecosystems are examples of processes that could lock in further warming.
And yet, climate change is still treated like something we have time to get around to.
We don’t.
There is no magical date when Earth suddenly becomes “too far gone”. But every fraction of a degree of warming increases the damage, while some changes – from melting ice sheets to thawing permafrost and ecosystem collapse – can become increasingly difficult to reverse.
That should terrify us.
Instead, we get political arguments about whether climate action is “too expensive”, while the cost of doing nothing quietly gets passed on to us. We get speeches about future targets while emissions continue. We get told to recycle our coffee cups while some of the world’s biggest polluters continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere.
Individual choices matter, but this cannot be solved by guilt-tripping people over their shopping bags. We need governments, industries and corporations to make serious changes – and we need them now.
Because this isn’t about saving the planet. The planet will survive us. It’s about deciding what kind of planet we get to survive on.
