An unusually gentle winter is just not as dramatic as a heatwave. It’s fairly helpful whenever you’re making an attempt to defeat Vladimir Putin’s power blackmail. Europe’s fuel crunch is much less painful than feared.

As we see in 2023, then, UK information is dominated by a rogue royal oversharing about his early sexual encounters. Our prime minister Rishi Sunak lacking local weather motion off his five priorities has been overshadowed by discourse on whether or not making 17-year-olds research maths will crush their creativity. (My unpopular opinion: numeracy is sweet, truly, you probably have the maths lecturers to instill it, which we don’t.)

Certainly, the dominant local weather tales over the Christmas break had a feelgood flavour. Whose coronary heart might fail to be warmed by Greta Thunberg’s public takedown of misogynist influencer, supercar fanatic and alleged intercourse trafficker Andrew Tate? What’s to not love about Glass Onion, Netflix’s camp whodunnit that skewers billionaire hubris and hinges on a – bodily implausible, politically salient – hydrogen-derived gasoline?

But it surely’s my solemn obligation to tell you that international heating remains to be an issue. 2022 was the warmest year on record for the UK, once more, and in the top 10 globally. And so we get again to work.

Glad new 12 months, readers.

This week’s tales

• Thirteen critical questions for international climate action in 2023
• World Bank moots stronger strategic focus on climate action
• German CO2 cuts stall as coal, oil use cancel out renewable gains
• Lula revives $1 billion Amazon Fund and environmental protections
• Russia’s invasion & Pakistan’s floods defined 2022 in climate