A CHANGE OF CLIMATE

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Volcanoes produce 50 times less carbon dioxide than humans do, so we know they are not the leading cause of global warming. Human activity – from releasing greenhouse gases and aerosols into the atmosphere, to changing the use of land – is the main driver of climate change.

While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it: people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities. These conclusions come from analyses of millions of measurements gathered in different parts of the world.Mantel’s narratives are always surging forwards, but are always pulled backwards: there is the power of ghosts. Yet she has come to know so much about the history that the characters from this distant time seem more familiar, less peculiar, than those who inhabit any of her other novels.

Sorry to Disturb” is a brilliantly unsettling vignette, narrated by a British woman living in Saudi Arabia with her husband. Agriculture – Planting crops and rearing animals releases many different types of greenhouse gases into the air. But by harnessing that same ability to innovate and attaching it to a renewed sense of shared responsibility, we can find ways to cool the planet down, fight climate change, and chart a course toward a more just, equitable, and sustainable future. The amount of warming we will see, beyond what we have already caused, depends on the changes we make.

The influence of this poltergeist in the narrative is all the more perplexing when one knows that the story was first published as a memoir, under the slightly different title “Someone to Disturb”, in the London Review of Books. And we must honestly address its origins—even though it can sometimes be difficult, or even uncomfortable, to do so.

Invited to talk about her husband, Mrs Sidney becomes distressed: “the scarlet line of lipstick above her top lip contorted independently of the mouth”. Taken together, these miserable and sometimes deadly effects are what have come to be known as climate change.This graph, from Munich RE's Topics Geo Natural Catastrophes report, shows events causing loss are becoming more frequent. Transformed from her memories of Glossop in Derbyshire, where she grew up, it is another of Mantel’s prisons of the spirit. The widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers, combined with certain crop-management practices that prioritize high yields over soil health, means that agriculture accounts for nearly three-quarters of the nitrous oxide found in our atmosphere. We, as individuals, must change our consumption habits and pressure those who represent us – our employers, our politicians – to move rapidly to a low-carbon world.