When the outside world is too disturbing to confront, people seek
relief through the vicarious safety of fantasy. This explains why 2025
was a banner year for horror movies. J.G. Ballard, an English novelist
and essayist, noted that, “The ultimate dystopia is the inside of
one’s own head.” Dr. Coltan Scrivner, a behavioural scientist agrees.
“You walk around with your mask of tranquillity, but inside your mind
is a maze of worries. Horror allows you to take off your mask.” (The
Guardian Weekly, Editorial, Oct. 24, 2025.) So with this genre of
movie you get to experience horror, but not the real kind that you
might be reluctant to confront.
As we mark the beginning of 2026, we are one quarter of our way
through the 21st century and are coming closer to the haunting
forecasts of climate catastrophe by the end of the century, if we do
not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So a review of 2025 seems
appropriate.
* 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years that humanity has ever
experienced, and 2025 is expected to be comparable.
* Limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, a target set in
the Paris Agreement of 2015, has been exceeded in the last two years.
Carbon dioxide emissions are still at a record high, with no
indication that they are coming down soon. The failure to meet this
“existential threat” to humanity has been summarized by Antonio
Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, as a “moral
failure”.
* Despite the pledge of the world community to “phase out fossil
fuels”, 2024 set a record for coal consumption, and 2025 is due to
exceed that record. Although energy from renewable sources is rapidly
increasing, global demand for energy is increasing even faster. The
most optimistic forecast of the International Energy Agency is that
oil consumption will peak about 2030, then be followed by a long and
slow decline.
* US President Donald Trump has called the global climate crisis a
“hoax”, a “green scam”, the greatest con job ever perpetuated”, and a
“prediction made by stupid people.” Accordingly, he has withdrawn from
international climate organizations and authorized drilling for oil in
Alaska, reduced federal funding for solar and wind projects,
encouraged fossil fuel consumption by cutting efficiency standards in
cars, and railed against the use and production of electric vehicles.
* At the insistence of the German auto industry, Europe’s conversion
to electric vehicles has been scaled back because of economic
considerations.
* Warmer southern oceans are destabilizing the entire Antarctic ice
sheet, promising accelerated sea level rise and global weather
changes. Greenland’s mountains of ice continue to melt. All the
world’s coastal cities can expect slow, progressive and unstoppable
flooding.
* More than 90% of the heat generated by atmospheric greenhouse gases
is absorbed by the world’s oceans, a process that is disrupting marine
ecologies, and the rising level of atmospheric CO2 is instigating
dangerous acidification.
* Rising global temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans are
increasing the severity of storms by about 10% per Celsius degree.
Monsoons and typhoons are becoming more intense. Successive typhoonsin at least five Southeast Asian countries have caused extensive
damage and death. Jamaica experienced “Melissa”, its worst hurricane
ever.
* Too much methane is escaping from fossil fuel production, a problem
that could be easily, cheaply and even profitably corrected with just
a little more care and regulation. Methane survives in the atmosphere
for about 20 years, but has a heating effect about 80 times greater
than carbon dioxide.
* Despite the world being awash with plastics and microplastics, a
2025 meeting to establish a Global Plastics Treaty to reduce plastic
pollution was adjourned after failing to come to any agreement.
* Following a record 2023, 2025 was the second worst fire season in
Canadian history, with 8,000 wildfires affecting every province and
territory, seriously impairing air quality in cities throughout
eastern Canada and the northeast US. Such fires, also throughout much
of Europe, added millions of tonnes of CO2 to an atmosphere already
overloaded with greenhouse gases.
* The United Nations’ COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil, made little
progress. “Phasing out fossil fuels” was only obliquely supported
because it had been agreed to in 2023 at COP28, and could not be
discarded. Regardless, the “phasing out” is voluntary, with no
prescribed schedule. Brazil indicated its plans to drill for oil off
the coast of the Amazon. Alberta wants to expand its production.
Sadly, this is not a horror movie. It is a reality that requires
us—individually and collectively—to confront the challenges of
environmental degradation and climate change with awareness, bravery,
resourcefulness, ingenuity and determination. Will we think and behave
the same in 2026 as we did in 2025? Will we stop viewing the world
through the veil of fantasy? If we are honest enough to notice, a
terrifying option is unfolding outside the distraction of our
entertainment and myopia. We have much to do, we actually know how to
do it, and we are rapidly running out of time to accomplish what needs
to be done. So let each and every one of us gather our resolve to make
2026 a more hopeful year than 2025. The movie in which we’re living is
real.
Happy New Year, humanity.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: The Birds (still) – Photo by Vitorio Benedetti
Vitorio Benedetti via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)