First, the bad news: climate change, in particular rising temperatures, has passed a point of no return, according to environmental campaigner and investigative journalist George Monbiot.1 Writing in the Guardian newspaper, he asserts that the periodhas passed when more than two degrees centigrade of global temperature increase could have been stopped. He believes we've missed the boat and suggests "we'll be lucky to get away with four degrees". The relevance, dear reader, of two degrees or four will become clear. On his website (www.monbiot.com), Monbiot catalogues a number of sources from which he concludes that this is the prevailing view among scientists in this field, in particular those gathering at a climate change conference in Copenhagen last month.
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