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DYER: It’s time to accept that urgent action on climate change is needed

The first hurricane to hit Hawaii in 34 years. The Mediterranean on fire from Spain to Greece. ‘Heat domes’ one after another for months on end in Europe and North America. Thousands of excess deaths. A record ‘El Niño’ piled on top of an average global temperature up from 1.2°C five years ago. Predicted high for this year: 1.7°C.

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Surely they’ll get it now, you think, but no, they won’t. It once seemed sensible to think that when the climate damage gets bad enough and the trend line becomes impossible to ignore, ‘they’ (meaning the climate change deniers and their fellow travellers) will finally accept that the threat is real and urgent action is necessary. A few of them will, but most will not.

It is becoming clear that as the old position of flat disbelief in climate science becomes untenable, the preferred response among former deniers is to admit that climate change is big, dangerous and already well underway – but to insist that it is already too late and nothing can be done about it now.

The most dramatic movement in ballet is the grand jeté, a soaring leap across........

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