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The Future I Dreaded So Much Is Here. And It’s Scary (and Hot) as Hell

July 8, 2021 Leonardo Ambasciano

Another place, another time. Liguria, Italy. 2016, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano. — **Another place, another time**. Liguria, Italy. 2016, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano.

In 2019 I saw the effects of man-made climate change with my own eyes.

It was a scorching 40°C outside, well above the usually mild June temperatures of the Ligurian Riviera. The air was blistering hot, like the devil’s breath. The pitiful shrubs and the wilted flowerbeds on the sidewalk reminded me of something from a bygone era, like fossilised remains of a poor urban planning from another century. The few and far-between palms on the boulevard provided no shade at all. An elderly lady fainted a few metres from me, collapsing lifeless on the ground.

Pseudoscience at the time of Covid-19

March 28, 2020 Leonardo Ambasciano

The Battle of Balaclava, 2020 edition: the Russian artillery stands for SARS-CoV-2; the Light Brigade of the Six Hundred is herd immunity. Source: Charge of the Light Brigade by R. C. Woodville Jr. Wikipedia. — The Battle of Balaclava, 2020 edition: the Russian artillery stands for SARS-CoV-2; the Light Brigade of the Six Hundred is herd immunity. **Source**: *Charge of the Light Brigade* by R. C. Woodville Jr. Wikipedia.

The response by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his team to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been dismal. On 12 March, I had to endure possibly one of the most cringeworthy political speeches of recent history, when Johnson addressed the nation to tell its citizens that despite the fact that “many more families [were] going to lose loved ones before their time” (meaning the elderly), there was basically nothing to do in terms of prevention (Stewart, Proctor and Siddique 2020). Johnson’s statement was mind-boggling for a variety of reason, the most astounding of which was that the core Tory electorate is currently made up of older people (Inman 2019). You get what you vote for, I guess (Walker 2020), but is a selective culling of the elderly really what elderly Conservative voters voted for during the recent national election?