The Big Mood: this naked man riding a scooter in the heatwave

Hard to really care about climate change, isn’t it? Of course, in a superficial and – at times – performative way, you do your bit: recycle, only take almond milk in your Pret latte, make a big show of refusing a straw when your Hinge date slides your G&T over to you. Follow Greta Thunberg.

Beyond that though, the whole shebang terrifies you. Climate change is a beast far beyond the realms your narrow little imagination is capable of travelling to. Climate change is the Demogorgon, lurking in the shadows, waiting to swallow your entire way of life into its gaping maw. So no, to be honest, you don’t want to think about it! It’s simply too hard. So straws it is for now, and dodging all headlines about warming Earth cores until further notice.

In completely unrelated news, Europe is the midst of a heatwave so scorching that in Germany, the populace is resorting to riding scooters in the nuddy.

As with other animals, extreme temperature sends humans off their rockers. In university, a professor once informed me about a paper a former student had written, studying the effects of rising temperatures on ​“looser” behaviour. I will never forget it, in most part because of its inspired title: Fast Times in Rising Climes.

The point it made, though, was turn up the heat on the flesh bags we call bodies and we’re driven to behave in an unusual manner. Like riding a scooter through Brandenburg in nothing but a bike helmet and some Josef Seibels. Safety first!

“It is too hot,” the man (myth? legend?) said in his defence when pulled over.

Heed these words, readers. Right now, this is a funny story. We’re going into a banner weekend that combines payday with predicted temperatures of up to 31°C in the UK. A German guy has got his wang out because he’s overheated. L o l.

But it’s going to get hotter. And hotter. There will come a point when we stop sunbathing, stop reaching for the tinnies and the Ambre Solaire, and start desperately trying to seek the nearest source of water and maybe a gun, so no one else can get their paws on our stash. The climate wars will start, the inhabitable land mass will shrink, our eco-systems will be forever thrown off kilter. All we know will turn to sand and ice and mud. We will all be naked, naked and mewling for the world that went before.

This Brandenburg Nostradamus is merely ahead of the game. He has seen the future. And it is too hot.