The Last Generation : How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change

Since the last ice age, almost thirteen thousand years ago, humans have prospered in what has been a relatively stable, predictable climate. But as Fred Pearce examines in The Last Generation—a compelling, fascinating, passionate but alarming portrait of a planet in crisis—our generation may very well be the last to be so blessed. For the most part, the facts of climate change have become all too familiar to us: a rise in average temperatures around the globe, the melting of arctic ice, soaring levels of carbon dioxide and methane, record-breaking summer heat, predictions of unseasonably cold winters, an increase in the number and violence of tsunamis and hurricanes, and on and on and on. What does it all mean? Does all the bad news add up to something or are we just scaring ourselves unnecessarily? A head-in-the-sand response my be to assume that Mother Nature—in her infinite patience and wisdom—eventually will gently turn back the hands of the clock and return the planet to its proper balance. All will be well. Don’t bet on it, warns Pearce. The crisis confronting the planet is of a very different nature than anything we have ever confronted. Climate change from now on will not be gradual, he maintains: nature doesn’t do gradual change. There is precedent for catastrophic reversals of fortune: records prove that in the past much of the world’s climate has switched from Arctic to tropical in as few as three to five years. It can happen again. So forget what the environmentalists have told you about nature being fragile, a helpless victim of human excess. The truth is the opposite. She is a wild and resourceful beast given to fits of rage. And now that we are provoking her beyond her endurance, she is starting to seek her revenge.