The stakes just got bigger
It’s official, January 2025 was the hottest January in recorded history. It was a whole 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels. What makes this doubly alarming is climate watchers expected January to be cooler this year thanks to the natural “La Niña” phenomenon. Apparently, the climate itself didn’t get the memo.
La Niña is a part of the El Niño southern oscillation, a climate fluctuation that slowly sloshes vast bodies of water and heat between different ocean basins and disrupts weather patterns around the world. La Niña is the colder counterpart of El Niño.
What came to be known as “El Niño de navidad,” because it happened around Christmas, was first noticed by 17th century Peruvian fishermen who observed a distinct drop in their sardine catch. The decline in the local sardine population coincided with much warmer than usual coastal waters.
To confound matters even more, while the European continent experienced a warmer January, it was an unusually cold January here in Britain. This may have been due to fluxuations in the usually warming waters of the Gulf Stream, also caused by climate change. (I know, it gets confusing.)
These small apparent inconsistencies feed into the false narrative that climate change isn’t a real phenomenon. The confusion stems in part from the fact that climate and weather are not synonyms. “Climate” refers to weather conditions prevailing in large geographic areas over a long period of time. “Weather” is what you experience when you get up from the couch and take a stroll in your back garden.
Climate change is a clear and present existential threat to the human race. Of course, Donald Trump’s “administration,” whose motto is “Drill, baby, drill,” has no official stance on global climate change. Unless you consider “LOL” an official stance. In his only debate with Kamala Harris, Trump reinforced that he still conflates climate change with clean air. Paradoxically, clean air policies introduced over the years, while making the world less smoggy, caused clouds to reflect less sunlight back to space, adding to global warming!
Planet earth is our only home. As the saying goes, “We have no Plan(et) B.” If we screw this up, nothing else matters. Meanwhile Trump and his cult of thugs are spray painting the bulkhead of the Titanic. In order for us to get on with the job and save the ship, we have to get rid of them.
There’s two things we can do. The first is to vote, and make sure your neighbours and everybody you know votes. The next is we must all, metaphorically at least, take to the streets. We must become activists. Bug your representatives. Make what financial contributions you can to Democratic political organisations. Get out in the streets and march with protesters. Just do it.
An idea is forming in me right now. We must organise the biggest march on Washington in the nation’s history. I’m thinking by next January, on Martin Luther King Day, a day of solemn observance Trump the racist abolished. If we could go to Washington and — by the millions — protest Trump and his goons, we would be a force that would terrify Trump and the rest of the government. It might or might not work, but what else do we have? We have to do something. None of us can afford to be complacent. Too much is at stake.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.