It is interesting to look at the relative insanity of the last 5 years as a kind of collective Kübler-Ross model progression.
I think the Cape Town water crisis is a good example of how we are likely to deal with global warming. Everyone knew it was an issue, and people didn't want to act. But eventually catastrophic felt inevitable and people finally did what was necessary to curb water consumption.
The current water crisis in Chennai feels even more severe, no?
I don't think the severity of the crisis necessarily is the most relevant characteristic. We're in uncharted territory here. Any example of how to weather something like what either city — or any of the dozens more to come — has suffered can be instructive in how to deal better with the next one.
It's stomach churning to think that temperatures was relatively stable even into the 1980s, when millennials were born e.g. not that long ago!