I’m really afraid that the current efforts at decarbonization, or whatever you want to call it, will end up being too little too late. I thankfully will never have children, but even so, leaving a dying planet behind me doesn’t make me happy.

Bewildering to have read about the risk of these avoidable deaths only a few days ago and now confirmation that they already occurring. We are now at a rate of acceleration where I haven’t even closed the tab of the prediction article before it is realised.

Already, weather stations in the Persian Gulf have recorded wetbulb measurements – a combination of heat and humidity – beyond the point (35C at 100% humidity) at which most human beings can survive. At other stations, on the shores of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California and the western side of south Asia, measurements have come close. In large parts of Africa there is almost no monitoring of extreme heat events. People are likely to have been dying of heat stress in high numbers already, but their cause of death has not been registered.

India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and central America face extreme risk. Weather events such as massive floods and intensified cyclones and hurricanes will keep hammering countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Haiti and Myanmar. Many people will have to move or die.

The novel Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson opens with a “wet bulb 38” heat wave in India, i.e where evaporation can’t cool you to below that temperature. Millions died in that fictional situation, so it’s horrifying to me to see headlines like this.