Meteorologists have started calling the 21st century 'the century of extremes'. In just the last decade, we have watched wildfires devour whole Californian towns, floods swallow entire neighbourhoods of Pakistan, and heatwaves shatter records from Sicily to Siberia. And, if the models are right, we are only at the beginning.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, by 2050 more than three billion people will be living in areas that experience extreme heat for at least one month a year. In cities like Cairo, Delhi and Phoenix, summer nights will rarely drop below 30 °C. Farmers who grew wheat for generations will be growing sorghum or nothing at all.
The oceans, too, are changing. In some parts of the Pacific, sea surface temperatures will have risen by more than 2 °C by the middle of the century. Half of the world's coral reefs, scientists warn, will have bleached beyond recovery. Storms will be forming further from the equator, and hurricane season will be starting weeks earlier than it does today.
It is not all bad news. Reforestation projects in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Costa Rica have already planted billions of trees. By the end of this decade, the European Union will have installed enough offshore wind capacity to power thirty million homes. Cities from Copenhagen to Curitiba are proving that a modern life can be low-carbon.
What no expert doubts is this: the world that our children will be living in will look, sound and feel quite different from ours. The question is not whether nature will change us — it is whether we, in time, will have changed the way we treat it.
