The following was written by Oliver Jeffers on April 3, 2025:

A piece I made 8 years ago that has eerie echoes to today.

On top of an old globe I acquired long ago, decayed to such a degree that it looked like the earth was scorched, I found where the USA lay, and painted a beautiful rose garden behind a picket fence.

I called it ‘America First’, and along with the handwritten type that says ‘Made America Great Again’ I was referring to two oft repeated Conservative slogans in order to point out both the absurdity and irresponsibility of an isolationist approach to a climate growing rapidly more hostile to human life.

Yesterday’s news of the USAs new policy on global tariffs gives me similar feelings of an even stronger ‘what’s in it for me’ isolationist attitude to what has been an interconnected world. But with the added fear that climate, a still looming catastrophic problem, has been relegated to the sidelines.

Tariffs, trade and economics are man-made concepts we could alter overnight, if we all agreed.
The climate is not.
To stand any chance of survival, we need to start acting with a sense of unified purpose.
The weather doesn’t care about borders or tariffs.