It’s a beautiful day. The skies are blue. The air warm. There’s a soft, pleasurable breeze. Birds sing and feed their fledglings. Bees and butterflies flit from flower to flower. Insects dance in the air. It’s peaceful. It’s glorious.

It is hard to believe such pastoral delights are harbingers of catastrophe but everything I have read today suggest we are on the cusp if not already tipping into a climate crisis that will be devastating. From the sublime to alarm.

I am incredibly fortunate to have lived my entire life so far in a place and period of stability and tranquility. I fear if we continue as we are this may not be the case for too much longer.

I’ve been reading lots of big history recently, epic stories stretching from pre-history to the present day, so I know these crises have happened before. Climate, migration, technology are the macro forces that have shaped and shifted our human story and that of the planet we inhabit.

Populations have collapsed and civilisations have crumbled. At times with shocking speed. It is horrific to read about, but it feels remote, something from our past that we have moved on from.

These forces haven’t gone. They still have the power to fracture our world. Now, they approaching the present from the future. We know it, yet it still feels remote.

Unlike our ancestors, we have more history to learn from and the scientific methods and data to analyse and predict with greater precision the shape of things to come. The future is not inevitable but we can model it with greater accuracy than the auguries could provide.

The mounting evidence points to impending disaster. Starvation, war, disease. Ecosystems break down collapsing geo-political order in the process. Populations will shrink, our capabilities and technologies will regress, our society will become more primitive. We are woefully unprepared for survival in these conditions. If we aren’t utterly annihilated, history teaches us that humanity may one day recover, renew and advance again but in the short term our development, perhaps our very existence, will be arrested.

Our humanity is both our biggest asset and our greatest fallibility. We may have greater powers of foresight than ever before, but we struggle to imagine or believe or take the action needed to agree and adapt to a new reality. The enemy is in front of us but we cannot see it because it is everywhere . It is in the air, in the water, in every act, hiding in plain sight.

The fire that consumed Notre-Dame this week tells us that humans understand disaster better when they can see it before their very eyes. By then it is too late. A literal burning (or flooding, or shaking) platform, is a tragedy that must be responded to urgently. That in retrospect, should have been averted. This, we think, is a crisis, not this abstract threat of oblivion masquerading as an idyll.

Incredible bravery saved Notre-Dame. Astounding generosity pledges to restore it. Diligent scholarship and skilled craftsmanship mean its recovery is within reach. We can only hope the same will be true for planet and our society.

Notre-Dame tells us the choice is ours. We can risk losing everything to an inferno, or we can invest in the preventative action needed to preserve the beauty and history we value.

It’s easy to think this is a problem for other people. Something for them, in distant times or lands, not us. We have beaches and barbecues, ice cream and picnics. Good times with friends and family. To us, this is delightful, not a crisis. This is not only a grave injustice in an unequal world but history tells us distance, borders, and walls are not impervious in the face of global crisis.

Climate change is a known but nebulous concern too easily cast aside by pleasure and convenience. We resist migration and are enthralled by technology. We assume progress is irreversible despite the fragility of our existence.

We must either drastically transform our systems, limit our lifestyles and adapt to a more humble, equitable and sustainable way of life; or one day soon we will be forced to.