RUPERT Read’s latest book on the climate crisis is underpinned by the realisation that pretty much all of us are “in some form or another of climate denial” — about honestly facing up to the level of threat and the speed and depth of change required to successfully deal with it.

Carbon Action Tracker estimates that current global policies will lead to 2.9°C of warming by 2100. Read believes it is “very likely” climate and ecological chaos will lead to civilisation disintegrating within the lifetimes of some readers.

He argues that the desperate situation we now find ourselves in cannot be adequately addressed from within our current paradigm of politics and economics. As the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warned in 2018, limiting warming to 1.5°C will “require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”