Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitorbirds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons — which makes unnatural changes in these crucial. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot — and we all know that choking ‘smog season’, months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.
As the planet heats — we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times — it collapses. The more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases — carbon, sulphur, methane — are emitted. These block our planet’s natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping this within.