“For the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization,” says Bill McKibben, Earth’s temperature was two degrees Celsius above “normal.”
Granted, the temperature spike lasted for only a few hours but, warns McKibben, climate change is coming much faster than scientists had previously predicted. Most of the northern hemisphere has not had a winter to speak of and the consequences are overwhelming.
Take last month’s Tropical Cyclone Winston, which crashed into Fiji: “In financial terms, the storm wiped out ten percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, roughly equivalent to fifteen simultaneous Hurricane Katrina’s.”
