In early June 2020, the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slavetrader (1636– 1721), was pulled from its plinth and thrown into the Bristol docks (Antink 2020). The historic moment was captured on many phones and shared widely on social media. Cries of jubilation, people jumping up and down, screams between anger and delight, capture an atmosphere of catharsis: the release of emotions otherwise hidden from public expression. There had been long-running campaigns to remove the statue, as well as Colston's name, from streets and other public spaces. Bristol, a port city, was established through the significant profits derived from the slave trade, and Colston was a key figure in that economy. What happened in the summer of 2020 was a spectacular reckoning with colonial, racist history, sparked in turn by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, thousands of miles away. Before sending Colston off into the harbour, protestors knelt on the neck of the bronze statue, invoking the death of Floyd whose last words, “I can't breathe”, had become a powerful slogan for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement around the world.

As BLM protests, which began before the Colston statue was pulled down, spread beyond the US, the dismantling of public memorials to histories of slavery and white empire became its own trend. People around the world connected racist policing in the current moment with longer legacies of colonial violence still memorialised in cities and public spaces.

That summer also saw historic wildfires ravage across North America. Whole towns were engulfed in flames, and apocalyptic images of climate breakdown filled the media. It shouldn't be hard to connect the sudden manifestations of long brewing climate and ecological breakdown with the colonial histories being protested loudly elsewhere – but unfortunately these connections are rarely drawn. Indeed, while each new and intensifying wave of ecological crisis – whether COVID-19, unbearable temperatures or megafloods – is greeted with horror, it tends to be met with a doubling down on technical and economic innovations that ensure nothing really has to change.