SIX DEGREES: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas
Fourth Estate £12.99, 358 pages
FT Bookshop price £10.39
Six Degrees is an apocalyptic primer of what to expect as the world heats up. At one degree above current global temperatures, there will be droughts in the US Midwest, the Amazon will start drying up and the Alps will thaw.
At two degrees, China can expect chronic water shortages, there will be conflagrations in southern Europe and the planet will suffer a catastrophic loss of biodiversity. Sounds terrible, right? Oh but hang on: there are four more degrees to go.
Likening it to Dante's Inferno, Mark Lynas grimly charts each descending circle of hell as climate change makes the Earth uninhabitable. Land masses shrink, deserts spread, there is mass migration northwards. Whoosh: there goes New York beneath the waves. Crackle: the rainforests burn up. Boom: that's an oceanic methane eruption "wiping out billions of people - perhaps in days". It's sobering stuff, and shaming too, though one detects just a hint of relish in Lynas's descriptions of the environmental mayhem heading our way. Despite its sound scientific background (the projections are based on climate modelling forecasts), the book resembles one of those vivid medieval paintings depicting sinners getting their just desserts.
