The year that answers the questions

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” wrote Zeal Neale Hurston in her amazing novel, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ way back in 1937. Who knew it would fit so perfectly in describing 2022 as we approach the finish line. This year has not been kind to the World’s authoritarian leaders who pooh pooh-ed democracy, enthusiastically going about constructing alternatives to it. The latest one getting the most eyeballs, as Rishi Sunak’s rise to the post of prime minister-ship cracked open a new era in Britain, one preferring a competent meritocrat and wasting little time on the candidate’s racial identity. Triggering tipping points will lead to significant policy-relevant impacts, including substantial sea level rise from collapsing ice sheets, dieback of biodiverse ecologies like the Amazon rainforest and warm-water corals, and carbon release from thawing permafrost.