SOME climate crises are big, noisy and obvious: think hurricanes , typhoons, floods and wildfires. But there are other climate crises that tend to be overlooked. These are quieter and more insidious, and we often fail to properly recognise them.

Take the example of when the UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that, in the second week of August, deaths from covid-19 had reached the lowest weekly levels for five months . Among a flurry of coronavirus statistics, the statisticians were keen to point out, presumably to avoid any panic, that the spike in deaths that occurred that …