A staple of dystopian science fictions is an inner sanctum of privilege and an outer world peopled by the desperate poor. The insiders, living off the exploited labour of the outlands, are indifferent to the horrors beyond their walls.

As environmental breakdown accelerates, the planet itself is being treated as the outer world. A rich core extracts wealth from the periphery, often with horrendous cruelty, while the insiders turn their eyes from the human and environmental costs. The periphery becomes a sacrifice zone. Those in the core shrink to their air-conditioned offices.

At the Guardian, we seek to break out of the core and the mindset it cultivates. Guardian journalists tell the stories the rest of the media scarcely touch: stories from the periphery, such as David Azevedo, who died as a result of working on a construction site during an extreme heat wave in France. Or the people living in forgotten, “redlined” parts of US cities that, without the trees and green spaces of more prosperous suburbs, suffer worst from the urban heat island effect.

Exposing the threat of the climate emergency – and the greed of those who enable it – is central to the Guardian’s mission. But this is a collective effort – and we need your help.

If you can afford to fund the Guardian’s reporting, as a one-off payment or from just £4 per month, it will help us to share the truth about the influence of the fossil fuel giants and those that do their bidding.

Among the duties of journalism is to break down the perceptual walls between core and periphery, inside and outside, to confront power with its impacts, however remote they may seem. This is what we strive to do. Thank you.