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Extract - 'The Climate Crisis Is Here. This Is What It Looks Like' QuestionsADAPTED EXTRACT — THE GUARDIAN, JULY 2023
THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS HERE. THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.
For years, climate scientists warned of a threshold — a point beyond which warming would become self-reinforcing. Many people assumed this was a distant, hypothetical future. This summer, that future arrived.
Temperatures in southern Europe have broken records not seen since measurements began. The sea surface temperature around the United Kingdom reached 5°C above average. Wildfires burned through Greece, Canada, and Hawaii. The Amazon recorded its worst drought in living memory. These are not aberrations. These are announcements.
The fossil fuel industry has spent decades funding doubt — planting confusion, lobbying against clean energy legislation, and buying political silence. Meanwhile, ordinary people breathe the smoke of burning forests.
What strikes me, standing in the ruins of what was once a functioning climate system, is not anger — though that is there — but a kind of grief. We inherited a stable, temperate Earth. We are handing our children something else entirely.
The science has not failed. The politics has. And the media — by treating the climate emergency as one story among many, by granting space to those who manufacture doubt — has failed too. We are running out of time to pretend otherwise.
Guiding Question for Text
How does Monbiot use language, structure, and rhetorical techniques to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis and to hold different actors accountable?
Analyse how Monbiot's choice of diction and imagery creates a particular tone in this passage. What is the effect of this tone on the reader?
How does Monbiot structure his argument across the paragraphs? Consider how he moves from observation, to accusation, to emotional appeal. What is the intended effect?
Examine how Monbiot uses the technique of contrast (e.g. between 'what was once' and 'what is now'; between science and politics) to reinforce his central argument.
Comment on the purpose and audience of this text. How does Monbiot use language features appropriate to newspaper opinion writing to achieve his purposes?