Our correspondent talks to her predecessor about how global heating went from a ‘slow burn’ to the biggest story of all
Devastating floods across Europe, killer heatwaves in Canada, wildfires across the US. Extreme weather has hit the headlines across the world in the past few weeks, and even climate scientists have been shocked by its severity and extent, which they say is clearly linked to human activity in heating the planet.
It all comes as no surprise to Paul Brown, the Guardian’s former environment correspondent. He was warning of the consequences of climate change nearly four decades ago, from the mid-1980s, as scientists began to raise the alarm over greenhouse gas emissions and their potential impact.