Broken Record

An optimistic post for a week filled with grim news and, as the Emissions Gap Report highlights, broken records.

• We hit 2°C for the first time in history on 18 November

• 2023 remains on track to be the hottest year on record (in other words, we will break all previous heat records this year)

• We are also on track for a deadly 2.9°C of warming

  The cover of Emissions Gap Report features a broken record on its cover in the heat chart colours I now associate with Greta Thunberg. It reminded me of the marred vinyl record I invoke on the penultimate page of my book. The record skips. But in the Report it spins on an infinite repeat, stuck in its groove. Which, in turn, invokes Greta’s shorthand for such repetition: “blah blah blah.” I remember how we dislodged stuck records when I was a child: we jumped up and down with great force. A lot of us are jumping now; it’s hard to know when all of this jumping will create enough of a tremor to lift the needle but I have to believe it will. The spin will turn to a skip and we’ll be in a new song.