Former diplomat Arthur Snell says a heating planet is accelerating conflict and migration – and fostering a new age of empire. Democracies are dangerously unprepared, he warns

That insight led ultimately to his new book, Elemental, which examines how a climate crisis that threatens the planet’s capacity to sustain life is helping to stoke conflicts from drought-stricken Africa to a defrosting Arctic, as well as the rise of far-right populism in Europe and the US. “It’s like rising damp in your house – you don’t know it’s there, but it’s changing everything.”