杏吧原创

鈥淚 DID not want my grandchildren, someday in the future, to look back and say, 鈥極pa understood what was happening but did not make it clear鈥�.鈥� So Opa, otherwise known as renowned climate researcher , is telling it as he sees it, and the result is the most frightening book I have ever read, for three reasons.

First, Hansen has come to believe, based on studies of past climate change, that the threat facing us is far worse than he thought even a few years ago. The very survival of life on Earth is at stake, he says. The sun is 2 per cent brighter than it was just 250 million years ago, and if we burn up all the fossil fuel on the planet 鈥� all the oil, coal, tar sand and tar shale 鈥� we will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will ultimately lead to the oceans boiling away, he claims.

This won鈥檛 happen in our lifetimes, but if we don鈥檛 curb our emissions now it will become harder and harder to avert the total extinction of life. Which brings us to the second reason: Hansen thinks nothing meaningful is being done to limit emissions. 鈥淵our governments are lying through their teeth,鈥� he says. He believes the Kyoto protocol is a dismal failure, and its proposed successors, along with the cap-and-trade schemes favoured by President Barack Obama, have no chance of achieving what is needed either. 鈥淯nfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise 鈥� they are what they are,鈥� he points out.

It gets worse. Decades of experience with US governments have led Hansen to believe that the political systems in the US and many other democracies are incapable of delivering effective action, because politicians serve the short-term interests of special interest groups with plenty of money to throw around 鈥� like the fossil-fuel industry 鈥� rather than the long-term welfare of citizens.

Extraordinarily, Hansen thinks civil resistance is now the only way forward. 鈥淚t is up to you,鈥� he concludes 鈥� the third reason his book is so terrifying.

We鈥檇 better hope Hansen is wrong, but his track record is second to none. Earlier this decade, for instance, he was the one who stuck his neck out and said official predictions of only a modest rise in sea level this century were wrong, that ice caps would respond far more quickly to warming. It is now clear that he was right: the ice caps are already shrinking faster than other scientists thought, or were brave enough to say.

This is not the best-written science book ever, nor the easiest to understand. But it could be the most important one you鈥檒l ever read. It鈥檚 not too late to avert disaster, Hansen says, but we need to change tack fast.