We really need to take heed in regard to our children’s future and the health of our planet!

A Connected Crisis: Climate, Power, and the Struggle for Truth in a Hotter World

Climate change is no longer only a story about rising temperatures, melting ice, or extreme weather. It has become a story about power—who holds it, who defends it, and how it is exercised to shape what societies are willing to see, believe, and act upon. Recent reporting from Europe, the United States, and international institutions reveals a deeply troubling pattern: as scientific evidence hardens and climate impacts intensify, countervailing political, financial, and cultural forces are mobilizing to blunt action, undermine trust in expertise, and protect the fossil-fuelled status quo.

The climate crisis is therefore unfolding on multiple fronts at once. There is the physical crisis, measured in degrees Celsius, sea-level rise, and heat stress. But there is also a social and institutional crisis, marked by harassment of scientists, capture of cultural narratives, retreat by financial institutions, and weakening global cooperation. These dimensions are not separate. They reinforce one another, shaping whether societies respond with urgency—or drift further into paralysis.

A hotter world, a shrinking margin of safety

Scientists now confirm that 2025 was the third-hottest year ever recorded, capping three consecutive record-breaking years and pushing the global climate system deeper into dangerous territory. Multiple independent datasets—from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth, NOAA, and others—show that average global surface temperatures over the past three years have hovered at or above 1.4–1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. In practical terms, this means humanity is now brushing up against the most ambitious limit set by the Paris Agreement.

This is not a statistical anomaly or a temporary spike that can be waved away. Scientists are clear that the heat of recent years reflects the underlying trend of human-driven warming, with natural variability playing only a secondary role. El Niño conditions in 2023 and early 2024 provided a short-term boost, but by 2025—when El Niño weakened—the temperature signal still remained extraordinarily high. That persistence reveals a stark reality: the planet is now consistently hotter than at any point in the modern instrumental record.

The impacts are already severe and unevenly distributed. Polar regions have warmed at rates far exceeding the global average. Antarctica recorded its hottest year, while global sea-ice extent reached record lows during parts of the year. Roughly half of the world’s land area experienced more days of “strong” heat stress, with felt temperatures exceeding 32°C. For hundreds of millions of people, this translates into heightened health risks, reduced labor productivity, crop losses, and mounting strain on infrastructure.

Several climate scientists now argue that, “to all intents and purposes,” the 1.5°C threshold has been breached in lived experience, even if formal multi-year averages have not yet locked it in. The distinction may matter for accounting, but it matters far less for people enduring deadly heatwaves, water scarcity, or ecosystem collapse. What is striking is not only the severity of these findings, but how little corresponding urgency they have generated in political and economic decision-making.

Climate scientists under attack

At precisely the moment when societies most need clear, trusted information, climate scientists and weather forecasters are facing an escalating wave of hostility. In Spain, environment officials have warned of an “alarming increase” in online hate speech targeting meteorologists, science communicators, and climate researchers. The abuse has become serious enough to prompt formal complaints to prosecutors.

This harassment is not merely a personal issue. It corrodes the public information ecosystem. Studies of Spain’s state weather agency, Aemet, suggest that coordinated online attacks are actively shaping public perceptions of forecasts and undermining trust in official warnings. Researchers describe a growing “chilling effect,” in which scientists withdraw from public engagement to avoid harassment, threats, and reputational smears.

Conspiracy theories about weather manipulation and climate control flourish on major social-media platforms, feeding denial and confusion about the link between extreme weather and global warming. One analysis cited by Spanish officials found that nearly half of climate-related posts on X contained climate emergency denial, with a substantial share also including hate speech. Forecasters report seeing their photos reused alongside fabricated quotes, turning routine scientific communication into a trigger for personal attacks.

These dynamics are not accidental. They mirror tactics used in other domains where powerful interests face inconvenient evidence. By intimidating experts, flooding the public sphere with disinformation, and framing scientists as political actors rather than professionals reporting evidence, trust in institutions erodes. The result is a population less able to distinguish signal from noise—and therefore less able to support decisive action.

Fossil fuel influence in education and culture

While scientists face hostility for communicating evidence, fossil fuel companies continue to shape public understanding through subtler channels. In the United Kingdom, BP has been accused of exerting “insidious” influence over climate and energy narratives through its long-standing relationship with the Science Museum.

The concern is not simply that sponsorship exists, but how it shapes interpretation. Campaigners and scientists argue that such partnerships risk sanitizing BP’s historical and ongoing role in driving the climate crisis, while foregrounding its comparatively small investments in clean energy. Internal documents and partnership agreements, according to reporting, have raised questions about whether sponsors gain leverage over exhibition framing, language, or emphasis.

Museums and educational institutions carry a special authority. They are widely perceived as neutral arbiters of knowledge, especially by young people. When exhibits on climate and energy are co-branded with oil and gas companies, critics argue that responsibility is subtly reframed—from a systemic problem requiring fossil fuel phase-out to a more comfortable story of technological optimism and balance.

This approach aligns with a long history of fossil fuel companies funding educational materials that emphasize individual behavior or long-term innovation while diverting attention from the need to leave large portions of existing reserves unburned. The danger is not overt misinformation, but narrative dilution: a slow erosion of clarity about what science actually demands.

Wall Street’s retreat and the crisis of climate finance

At the same time, the financial sector—once heralded as a potential engine of climate action—is pulling back. Six years after high-profile pledges to use trillions of dollars to align finance with net-zero emissions, major Wall Street institutions have largely abandoned those ambitions.

In 2020, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink signaled what many saw as a turning point, promising to put climate risk at the center of investment strategy. Banks and asset managers joined alliances such as the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and the Net-Zero Asset Managers initiative. ESG investing entered the mainstream.

By 2026, much of that architecture has hollowed out. Investors have withdrawn tens of billions of dollars from ESG funds. Corporate mentions of “climate” and “sustainability” on earnings calls have plunged by roughly 75% in a single year. Under renewed political pressure in the United States, banks have doubled down on financing coal, oil, and gas projects, despite earlier commitments to scale them back.

Former insiders now describe many climate pledges as performative—made when climate leadership was fashionable, without serious intent to alter business models. Republican state treasurers and conservative advocacy groups successfully punished institutions that maintained climate commitments, withdrawing public funds and mounting coordinated campaigns.

This retreat matters because voluntary finance initiatives were never sufficient on their own. Without binding regulation, they remain vulnerable to political backlash. The result is a paradoxical situation: clean-energy investment in the U.S. has reached record levels, yet vast pools of capital remain locked into fossil infrastructure incompatible with climate goals.

Fragile multilateralism and the fight for cooperation

These trends are unfolding amid a broader crisis of global cooperation. Marking the United Nations’ 80th anniversary, Secretary-General António Guterres warned that powerful forces are actively undermining multilateralism and international law—just as planetary challenges demand stronger cooperation.

The post-war international system, for all its flaws, provided frameworks for collective problem-solving. Today, rising authoritarianism, geopolitical rivalry, and disinformation are eroding trust in shared institutions. Climate change is a prime casualty. While science calls for coordinated emissions cuts and cooperative adaptation, many governments are retreating into narrow national interests or short-term political calculations.

As global norms fray, it becomes easier to sideline climate agreements, for fossil fuel lobbies to stall regulation, and for digital platforms to amplify polarizing narratives without shared factual baselines. Without cooperation, climate impacts—heatwaves, food shocks, displacement—are more likely to fuel conflict than solidarity.

A connected crisis of science, power, and imagination

Taken together, these developments reveal climate change as a deeply connected crisis. The physics are clear: continued fossil fuel burning drives record heat and escalating risk. But the capacity to respond is shaped by social systems now under strain.

A few threads bind these stories together:

Delegitimizing expertise: Harassment of scientists weakens institutions capable of constraining fossil interests.
Capturing narratives: Corporate influence in cultural spaces reshapes how responsibility and solutions are understood.
Financial backtracking: Wall Street’s retreat shows how fragile voluntary climate action remains without enforceable rules.
Eroding cooperation: The weakening of multilateralism undermines the coordinated response the crisis demands.

The contradiction is stark. The longer action is delayed, the more the climate system locks in irreversible change. Yet the institutions capable of organizing a rapid transition—democratic governance, trusted science, responsible finance, and global cooperation—are under sustained pressure from those invested in delay.

Still, outcomes are not predetermined. The science remains a powerful anchor. Civil-society efforts to expose greenwashing and defend climate education are growing more sophisticated. The tools developed during the ESG era—emissions accounting, risk disclosure, transition planning—can be repurposed if political conditions shift.

The real question is whether societies will choose to rebuild resilience where it matters most: protecting scientists, insulating education from conflicted influence, binding finance to measurable decarbonization, and revitalizing cooperation rather than abandoning it.

If the past three years have been the hottest on record, they have also been a stress test for our institutions and narratives. The test is ongoing. The stakes—for democracy, justice, and a livable climate—could not be higher.

Plain-Language Takeaways: What This All Means

The planet is already dangerously hot. The last three years have been the hottest ever recorded. This isn’t a warning about the future—it’s a description of the present. Heat waves, ice loss, and climate stress are now the baseline, not exceptions.
Science isn’t failing—our systems are. Climate scientists largely agree on what’s happening and why. The problem is not a lack of knowledge, but growing efforts to discredit experts, confuse the public, and delay action.
Harassing scientists harms everyone. When forecasters and researchers are attacked or silenced, communities lose access to trustworthy information that can save lives during extreme heat, storms, and other emergencies.
Powerful interests are shaping the story. Fossil fuel companies continue to influence how climate change is discussed—through education, culture, and sponsorship—often softening the message about how urgently fossil fuels must be phased out.
Big finance has backed away from responsibility. Many major banks and investors made bold climate promises, then quietly retreated when political pressure increased. Without firm rules, voluntary pledges are fragile.
Global cooperation is weakening when we need it most. Climate change cannot be solved country by country, yet international cooperation is under strain. This makes meaningful, coordinated action harder and slower.
These problems are connected. Attacks on science, financial backtracking, cultural influence, and weakened global institutions all reinforce each other. Together, they slow our response to a crisis that is accelerating.
The future is not fixed. The science is clear, the tools exist, and people around the world are pushing back against delay and denial. What happens next depends on whether societies choose honesty, cooperation, and accountability over comfort and short-term profit.

In simple terms: the climate crisis is as much about trust, power, and collective courage as it is about carbon and temperature. How we protect truth and act together now will shape the world we leave behind.