Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium.
The passage highlights a moment of complacency regarding climate change, where people believed the seasons had transformed irreversibly. In this state of denial, even experienced musicians made significant omissions in their performances, suggesting a collective forgetfulness about the past seasons, particularly winter. Children, raised in this new reality, only knew winter through fairy tales, indicating a disconnection from nature's cycles.
However, just when this false sense of security reached its peak,...