It’s a question you hear muttered more and more in environmental circles and even more brashly from those focused on clean energy: given the shift in public priorities and the state of politics, should climate advocates just stop talking about climate change?

Scientists are still trying to figure out what’s happening — why the last two years were so inexplicably hot and 2024 broke through the symbolic figure of 1.5 degrees above temperatures before the industrial revolution. The worry is that all this fossil fuel burning has unleashed an unexpected step change in the climate system.

There’s no sugarcoating it — Donald Trump’s first hours in office were the most vicious and comprehensive assault on climate action that we’ve ever seen. What still remains to be seen is how effective rule-by-Sharpie really is and what reaction it provokes.

John Vaillant, author of the best-selling book Fire Weather, says the hotter our cities become, the more we must worry about fire. “I don’t expect downtown high rises to burn necessarily but houses are very susceptible to fire and things are much more precarious now.”

The year is barely underway and the paradoxes are already bleak. Climate fires exploded in LA just after Trump’s certification as winner of the US presidential election and the same day he confirmed his two-pronged approach to energy: more fossil fuels, no more renewables.

You’re kind of unusual. Don’t be offended — I think I must be too.

Pick any subcategory and you’re immediately swamped, lost in squadrons of reproachful browser tabs, disappointed bookmarks, and fanciful to-read lists.

There’s something strangely reassuring about the genre, even when it’s grim. Such insightful minds struggling with futures that are already arrived but largely invisible; baked in but beyond polite conversation.

The paltry amount wealthy nations agreed to give those less well off for climate reparations is about what the world spends on crude oil in just 40 days.

Almost none of the world’s most powerful leaders will be showing up in Baku — by contrast, more than 1700 fossil fuel lobbyists are mobbing the conference halls, official passes dangling from their necks.