Kurt Cobain once sang that ‘weather changes mood’. Always one for self-deprecating understatement, he pulled his punches in that line.

Weather does more than change mood. It can change history. There’s an entire academic theory that the Little Ice Age created the conditions which prompted Europeans to colonise the world.

Possibly starting around the late 1200s, and reaching its peak in the 1600s, the Little Ice Age - with its freezing and famines - contributed, some scholars claim, to the Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch and English getting in their caravels and gallivanting off to the New World. Culture is certainly shaped by weather. The way folk live in hot countries differs distinctly to how folk live in cold countries. The airwaves and newspapers are filled this week with advice from Australians on how to keep cool as temperatures go tropical on our asses.

It’s clear to anyone except the dim and deranged that climate change will upend society. We know we’ve got to get to grips with all manner of mind-bogglingly complex issues from the net zero job transition to supply chains for green renewable tech. But there’s a more cultural side to climate change too.

Climate change is going to alter who we are as a people. I’m a northern European from cold climes. That’s a central part of my identity.

Please don’t remake Highlander, it’s the worst film about Scotland ever

Violent demonstrators can no longer be allowed to go masked on Scottish streets

We let politicians play us for fools. Why on Earth do we tolerate it anymore?

The folk of Britain and Ireland live fundamentally like folk in Scandinavia, Germany and the Low Countries.

Evidently,........

© Herald Scotland