Climate change

Tacloban's own evacuation shelter was drowned by the storm surge it was supposed to protect people from, because Typhoon Haiyan's warnings focused on wind speed while the water, not the wind, did almost all the killing.

Australia's Black Summer burned an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom and killed an estimated three billion animals, and it happened after fire chiefs had already spent months publicly warning that the country was not ready.

Queensland's premier called the water that hit Toowoomba and Grantham in January 2011 an inland tsunami, a strange thing to say of a town seven hundred metres above sea level, and a court case running to 2022 settled how far the dam upstream was to blame.

Newer research says the exodus most people picture barely happened; population fell mainly because fewer people moved in, not because everyone fled.

2003

1431

476

Every developed country that signed the Kyoto Protocol met its targets, and global emissions rose by a third anyway.

1883

2015