Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Think of a VIP party. I mean, serious VIPs. $100,000 bar tab VIPs. We take a journey deep

into this nighttime economy, discovering a kind of beauty brokerage that explains why

rich men are always surrounded by glamorous women.

And America's baseball season is underway and as far as contagion is concerned, it's

not going well so far. Players and fans of other sports desperately want to return to their

past times, but baseball is providing some sobering lessons.

First up, though. The past decade was the hottest ever globally, and 2019 was one of the

three hottest years on record. That's according to this week's State of the Climate Report from

the American Meteorological Society. It's known as the annual physical of the climate system,

and it makes for increasingly grim reading. This is the kind of emergency that scientists say

is made much more likely and more damaging by climate change. Tens of thousands of people

last year devastating wildfires ripped through Australia. The intensity of it, it's like a

apocalypse, it's like something that you've never experienced before. Huge heat waves seared

America, Europe and India. In the tropics, there were almost a hundred cyclones at the Poles'

sea ice just kept melting. Alaska's blue, white giants are dying. Now, I've got to talk about

the ice in Greenland because it's melting. Iceland may have to change its name, but there were

also huge global protests. As environmental groups, such as extinction rebellion,

took to the streets to call for greater urgency in the fight against climate change.

To look at this year's report, though, it seems that that fight is so far being lost.

So certainly the most striking finding was that July 2019, the ranks of the hottest man in the

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