Last 12 months hottest ever

The last 12 months have been the hottest ever recorded.  

This chart is from Our World in Data.  Look how the temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere have been rising almost twice as fast as in the Southern Hemisphere.   In fact, they are now more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.  We have passed the 2 degrees "guideline" in the Northern Hemisphere.  

This is a terrifying chart.  After the last El Niño, temperatures were supposed to level off or even drop.  But they haven't.   

You would expect our leaders, political and corporate, to be concerned, to be panicking, even.  Yet they are not.  And a supine populace just accepts this.  

It's no good expecting anything to change unless we do it.  We can change our personal consumption to reduce emissions.  For example, we can become vegetarian.  We can buy an EV or a hybrid.  We can replace our gas/oil heating with heat pumps.   We can buy our electricity from green suppliers.  We can put solar panels on our roofs.   We can fly less.  Take public transport instead of driving everywhere.  

Of course, we might not be able to do all these things.  Solar panels have an upfront cost, even if you'll save by reducing how much electricity you'll buy later on.  Or there might not be green electricity supplies in your area.  But you can eat less meat and drink less cow's milk.  That won't add to your costs.  

And we can vote.   We can agitate and write letters to our local councils.  We can support parties which make climate change their priority.

It's up to us.  Don't shrug and say, "it's too hard."  Because if we don't act, we face imminent catastrophe. 

These anomalies are not relative to the period 1850 to 1899, which usually what is defined as being pre-industrial, but to the period 1861-1890.   The shape of the chart won't change, but the Y-scale will shift a bit.