This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a flame-wreathed kangaroo. The image from the bushfires in New South Wales dominated the new year front pages: an Antipodean vision of the hell to which, we are assured, climate change will soon condemn us all. As if to ram the message home, the Met Office has just published its annual summary. It shows that 2019 had the highest summer and winter temperatures yet recorded in the UK. Overall, the 2010s slot in behind the 2000s as the second-hottest decade on record.

If there’s one thing we can be confident about in 2020, then, it is that we will see more high-level warnings about the impact of climate change, more lectures from Greta