HINDSIGHT IS 2020

It was an annus horribilis for almost everybody last year, but there were some bright spots. Here are 10 events it’d be lovely to leave behind for good, and 10 that might give us hope for the future…

Apocalypse now

The year began badly, and never really recovered…

1 Bush fires

On 2 January, authorities in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Whales declared states of emergency as wildfires destroyed vast areas of the country, requiring the evacuation of numerous communities, putting thousands of human lives at risk and exacting a terrible toll on wildlife, with an estimated half a billion animals perishing in the flames. In the US, the California wildfire season was the worst in recent history, with fires consuming over 4% of the state’s land area.

2 The threat of World War III

On 3 January – we should have seen the way the year was going then – the US authorised a drone strike at the Baghdad International Airport, killing an Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. This raised already simmering tensions in the region to boiling point, with Iran launching missile strikes at military bases in Iraq where American soldiers were based, and Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shot down by Iranian forces (with 176 casualties) – after it was supposedly mistaken for a military aircraft.

3 Volcano

It didn’t, perhaps, cause the same level of disruption as the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 (over 100,000 flights in and out of Europe had to be cancelled), but when the Philippines’ Taal Volcano erupted for the first time in 43 years on 12 January, the ash thrown into the atmosphere caused evacuations; work, school and flight cancellations; and 39 deaths in the most densely populated parts of the Philippines, including the capital, Milan.

4 Brexit