History, it feels, is quickening pace. Pandemics, both old and new, are rocking the world, shaking its foundations. Systemic racism, an age-old disease, continues to facilitate violence on black bodies and undermine humanity, while a novel coronavirus has killed hundreds of thousands, disproportionately affected people of colour, and compounded the often racial inequalities that characterise our societies. Protestors now fill the streets, and across much of the anglophone world a tipping point has been reached. What will emerge from this moment is hard to say. A better question may be what do we want to emerge? Either way, there can be little doubt, change is afoot - and it’s been a long time coming.

In 2018, the World Meteorological Organization published its statement on the State of the Climate. The report showed that the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the last 22 years. In the same year, the State of California’s Energy Commission published a report linking changing atmospheric conditions due to global warming as a direct cause of the devastating forest fires that swept through California, burning nearly 1.9 million acres’ of land and costing more than US$3.5 billion of damages.