The layered risk of climate change

When I first started looking into climate change some twenty years ago, there were a few things I didn’t understand. I didn’t see how an average temperature increase of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius was so dangerous. Sea level rise was also puzzling. How could rising sea levels of mere centimetres pose any kind of risk?

Current world events are providing a tragically useful explanation. The politics of climate change often centres around trends and averages, but that’s not how it is experienced. W...