There will be mounting social pressure for climate laws far more ambitious than New Zealand’s law. To do enough on climate, some of the rich, high-emitting countries will have to be zero carbon by 2025. Nearly all wealthy countries will have to be zero carbon by 2030. It doesn’t matter which government is in power. Elections move too slowly. Voting feels helpless when the choice is between denial and delay. We will demand candidates that recognise the reality of this crisis.

A new president of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, the US, will pass a series of sweeping legislative changes to bring about a Green New Deal and help permanently decentralise political power from the extractive industries that have concentrated wealth for centuries.

George Monbiot has called this process “political rewilding” (where top-down governance is replaced with more participatory, spontaneous, bottom-up models), but it’s probably more easily understood as accountability. It’s the idea that industries holding the power to end civilisation as we know it shouldn’t regulate themselves. It’s the idea that government officials shouldn’t put corporate profits over the public good. It’s the idea that protecting the security of all life on Earth is really just about loving each other.

We will begin to redefine democracy through demonstrations, demanding climate justice. We will begin to redefine freedom in an era where the air we breathe embodies the deadly choices made by white men for hundreds of years.

This is how people will begin to listen again and exert moral leadership in all the positions of power we hold in our lives.