Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #322922 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Kirkus, starred review
Important reading for policy makers, climate-change skeptics and
anyone planning a future beyond the next decade.

Robert Macfarlane
...[S]uperbly explains and dramatizes both the causes and consequences of climate change. One reads it both gripped and deeply alarmed

James Lovelock
Pearce's scholarly and thoughtful book…will guide us in a sensible retreat to the place where we can negotiate a peace

Customer Reviews

Frightening but important
If you were worried by James Lovelock's book Revenge of Gaia, you will be scared stiff by Fred Pearce's version of the same story. His message is essentially that human impacts on the climate and other ecological features of our planet are reaching a tipping point where it will be impossible to reverse the changes, whatever we do. The evidence is that ice caps don't take thousands of years to melt, for example, but could go in a rush so that sea level rises by 30 metres in ten years, before the end of this century. If you live in London or round the coast, think what that means. And it's just one of he threats we face. Pearce's writing style is very direct and personal, like reading a good quality newspaper, and he pulls no punches. Buy a copy and send it to your MP.

A chilling book about global warming
'The Last Generation' is a chilling read concerning the likely dire consequences of man-made global warming. Very clearly written, Fred Pearce's book puts forward detailed and convincing scientific evidence that human fossil fuel burning is producing dramatic changes in the world's climate. Unless governments take drastic action to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the next decade nature will take its revenge and "climatic monsters" will be unleashed.
As the experienced climate scientist, Wally Broecker, says, "climate is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks".
As many people as possible should read this scary but thoughtful book, especially global warming sceptics such as George W. Bush and Jeremy Clarkson. It may even convert a few of them.

so now - you can't say you weren't warned.....
This is an engrossing, spine chilling, trenchant book.

All the more so given the thorough-going credibility of the author (his lack of axe to grind), his solid track record in science journalism, his depth of research and the testicle-crushing urgency of the subject matter.

Read it and scream. It's ok. That's what a sane human being should do. But then act.

I've only one criticism. Why, oh why, can he not 'name the beast'?
The problem - THE PROBLEM - is not the environment, still less is it the climate dynamics. It's us. Humans. Too many of us. Taking too much. Presuming even more. First we cut back on insane energy wastage, then we cut back on us, our numbers. Why is this kind of prescription difficult for top knotch science writers like Fred to articulate?