“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, former President Barack Obama’s first chief of staff, once said.

The spirit of the now-mayor of Chicago’s words live today among climate change researchers and activists, who are using a string of emergencies around the globe to draw attention to human-driven global warming.

With deadly wildfires scorching Greece and California, drought throwing Capetown, South Africa, into a water crisis and deadly heat searing Japan, just days after flooding killed 150, the signs of an over-stressed planet seem everywhere.