Taken together, this amounts to a state of collective paralysis. The world is catching fire before our eyes, the predictions of climate scientists are coming true, and we are either fumbling conversations about the causes or settling for not talking about those causes at all.

Climate change is so unlike any risk we have ever dealt with that we are hamstrung by a basic inability to articulate what it is, or what it means for our lives. But we do not have a choice anymore. There are many things that urgently need to happen to start reining in the climatic changes we have unleashed; deciding how we’re going to talk about those changes is a start.

The British news media need to accept that the changing climate is a story in itself, and not wait for a news release to be hurried out on the hottest day of the year. And no more images of polar bears. Britons do not see ourselves reflected in photos of melting ice; we need a new visual language that can convey the myriad issues like health, farming and tourism that are being affected right now by a changing climate.