Clive Hamilton’s meticulously researched book Requiem for a Species is to climate change what Jonathan Schell’s book The Fate of the Earth (1982) was to the nuclear menace: an advance eulogy for the human race, not for the faint-hearted. Hamilton’s predicament is captured in the opening statement: ‘sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard.’ Yet there is a solution, the author states: ‘We don’t have to take it lying down ... Only by acting, and acting ethically, can we redeem our humanity.’

Hamilton embarks on a grand tour of the issue, including a succinct summary of the scientific realities on which the rest of the book hinges, in the chapter titled ‘No Escaping the Science’. Here, the author exposes some of the prevailing myths regarding the consequences of ‘acceptable’ carbon dioxide emission rates and temperature targets, climate ‘stabilisation’ and the feasibility of effective adaptation. Numbers which grossly underestimate the effects of official carbon dioxide target levels, or of two- or three-degree Celsius rises in temperatures, have been plucked out of the air, often by economists, with minimal or no consultation with scientists. Yet current climate change trajectories exceed these parameters.