Cover your eyes: this is a real-life horror story

Mathew Hulbert reviews a new book on climate change and sets out the stark choices we face.

''Read this book and see into our future.'' ''Today it is as if some kind of revolution has taken place.'' ''Reading Mark’s book is - in terms of the unfolding disaster - like watching a slowly developing horror movie.''

If you’re anything like me then for many years green beliefs and issues, whilst being recognised, have been forced into retreat by other concerns (job, exams etc). That is of course until recently when climate change and how we, as individuals and as a society, react to it took centre stage.

For many years such debates failed to get very much mainstream media attention, or to enter public discourse outside of well meaning but largely unknown minority politicians.

Today it is as if some kind of revolution has taken place. Talk of global warming is everywhere - from Al Gore’s excellent Oscar-winning flick, An Inconvenient Truth, to front-page spreads in The Independent, and pop stars ready to sing their hearts out at the up-coming Live Earth concerts.

In fact, as I write this, global warming even got a mention in the Queen Vic on Eastenders. Just two lines, but still it made a nice change from burly bald-headed blokes telling everyone they’re going to "sort it" and various people being ordered to "gerrout my pub!"

Whether you’re a novice to the cause, or wanting to add to your existing knowledge of climate change, in my view the best writer on the issue is Mark Lynas, whose excellent popular columns can be read regularly in the New Statesman. His new book is called Six Degrees: our Future on a Hotter Planet.

After months of research, Lynas sets out, degree by degree, what is likely to happen if, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the earth’s temperature does rise globally in the coming decades. It is a peek into our future unless drastic action is taken.

It is an important lesson we can all learn, whether we want to or not. From colder winters, to frozen seas, to droughts, mass hunger and, eventually, a world virtually uninhabitable.

Reading Mark’s book is - in terms of the unfolding disaster - like watching a slowly developing horror movie. You know the kind, they lull you into a false sense of security, you think everything’s fine then, slowly but surely, the bad guys emerge and, within a matter of minutes, your world is changed forever and the human debris is clear for all to see. Truly a scary movie.

This could soon be our reality.

Having read this book I realise that there are two ways to respond. The first is to become so despondent by the whole impending doom of climate change that you feel nothing can be done. The second is to favour humanity and realise that we can help to stop climate change. The decision is ours to take.