Thread by @James_BG

With actual wildfires and temperatures topping 20C IN WINTER it's worth examining why many people are feeling 'deepest existential unease' (copyright @FCOClimate) and many others (let's be honest, many more) are enjoying what @Telegraph calls 'unseasonably warm weather'.

The first order cause of the unease is that climate change is clearly now accelerating so fast it is overcoming the shifting baseline syndrome that stopped us acting on it previously. You do not have to be very old to know last summer and this winter is weird.

Spring in winter, something entirely new in summer, is distressingly disorientating. It runs counter to our understanding of the seasons. It runs counter to the natural rhythms wildlife and agriculture relies on. It runs counter (and this is not hyperbole) to our sense of self.

But the bigger cause of the unease is the second order issue: if this is what climate impacts look like now, what comes next? Because as @dwallacewells puts it this is a 'beyond best case scenario' for the future. More on that here: businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…

What happens when the disrupted flow of the seasons becomes the norm? Temps are double what you'd expect now, what happens, as @tom_burke_47 asked yesterday, when they are double what you'd expect in summer? What happens when winter wildfires are followed by summer tropical rain?

What happens when those vast areas of the world are already marginal and under threat are overwhelmed by a changing climate? What happens to food production to coastal cities to low-lying islands?

Every political and business leader (and everyone else) should take a deep breath (and a stiff drink if they are so inclined) and read @dwallacewells The Uninhabitable Earth. And then reflect. At length.

Why are so many people seemingly unbothered by these record temperatures? Inevitably, the media has to take a large chunk of the blame. The failure to provide context to the record temperatures gets more glaring each time this happens. They are failing their readers.

And, as I've argued in the past, they don't do this with any other topic. Health, sports, politics, economics, the story is almost always supported by the context. And yet with the weather there continues this climate silence. businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…

But it is not just a failure of context. It is also a failure of imagination. The one thing I really struggle to understand as an instinctively risk averse person is this inability to cast your mind forward a few steps and ask 'what happens if this continues?'

A civilisation is in trouble if it forgets its past, but it is also in trouble if it can't envisage its future. And it is really in trouble if it starts to forget its past at the same time as struggling to envisage its future.

Just realised this thread has got a lot deeper than intended. 'Deepest existential unease' and 20C temperatures do funny things to your train of thought.

Anyways, last point, what can be done, beyond the obvious 'keep on keeping on' that the green economy and campaigners has been semi-successfully driving for the past decade?

One modest suggestion (and I am loathe to make it, because am instinctively resistant to such tactics, but needs must) would be to take a leaf out of the ERG/UKIP and Corbynista outriders playbook and inject some serious drama into the media debate.

Why do the same, really quite extreme, talking heads get so much airtime to discuss any and all issues in our media landscape? Because they give good TV. They provide conflict and drama and forcefulness and all the things broadcasters like.

This is antithetical to so much of the business community and the green movement, but there surely has to be a case for a more robust media stance in response to the scale of the current threat.

So when there is a chance to talk about the record temperatures or climate change more generally the tendency to pull punches really does need to end.

Dangerously ill-informed questions need to be called 'dangerously ill-informed', the threat to food systems and communities needs to be spelled out, viewers need to be challenged to really think about what is happening and imagine what it means. It's not alarmist, it's alarming.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life stalked by 'deepest existential unease'. I don't want to condemn my kids to far worse.

It is 20C and there are wildfires IN WINTER. It really is OK to scream from the rooftops. In fact it is more than OK, it is your duty as a citizen.

That really did get a bit deeper than intended. 'Deepest existential unease' is no fun so early in the morning.