Global warming will pass the 1.5°C limit within the next three to four years, and this is now considered unavoidable. A recent UN report found that current climate and energy policies put the world on track for about 2.6°C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. The 1.5°C goal was not the original aim: for years negotiators aimed for 2°C, and 1.5°C only entered the Paris Agreement in 2015 after small island nations and a group called the High Ambition Coalition pushed for it, backed by the EU and the US. A special scientific report afterwards showed the risks at 1.5°C are markedly lower than at 2°C. The focus now is on keeping 1.5°C within reach: overshooting temporarily, then bringing temperatures back down with deep emissions cuts and carbon removal.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.