Mark Lynas

16 October 2007

In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that by the end of the century global temperatures would have risen by between 1.4°C and 5.8°C (this worst-case scenario was raised to 6.4°C earlier this year).

So between 1 and 6 degrees is what lies in store for the planet according to the best scientific advice.

My idea was to piece together all the available scientific projections for the impacts of this warming on a degree-by-degree basis, with a chapter for 1 degree, 2 degrees and so on up the scale.

What kind of world will a child of six today in Britain be living in when they're 60?

In a best-case scenario, we will have completely reduced global carbon emissions by the middle of this century to negligible levels, and the resulting warming curve will be beginning to flatten out.

We will probably still see a degree or more of warming but if global temperatures stabilise this side of two degrees we can hopefully avoid the major tipping points.

The worst-case scenario sees these tipping points crossed well within our children's lifetimes - with the Amazon rainforest burning, huge amounts of methane being released by Siberian peat bogs and so on - by the time today's six-year-olds are 60, such a scenario would see global warming already out of control.

When I got your book I found myself turning to the chapter on 4 degrees. A friend said exactly the same. Any ideas why?

Maybe you were both cautiously pessimistic

You're granted six wishes: what do you ask for?

• A halt to road-building and all car-oriented government transport policies, and the banning of cars from all city centres.
• The introduction of carbon rationing here in the UK, and of contraction and convergence internationally.
• Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations peak at less than 400 parts per million and then decline.
• A Marshall Plan-type response to climate change, where massive government spending shifts towards helping make us carbon neutral.
• Low-cost airlines go out of business, and demand for air transport reduces dramatically.
• A shift in values where people realise that once basic needs are satisfied, rising material affluence does not lead to increased happiness.

Six things you do yourself to tackle climate change?

• Our house is mostly heated from local wood in a wood-burning stove.
• We avoid supermarkets, and shop in local shops or the farmers' market.
• I grow much of our own food in a nearby allotment, and get milk from a micro-dairy in a village close by
• We don't own a car, and hire one on only odd occasions.
• We holiday in the UK mostly, and never fly for recreational journeys.
• For work-related travel, I always use trains or boats within Europe.

What six things annoy you most?

• Top Gear, and the celebration of laddish car culture in magazines and on TV.
• The constant advertising for overseas holidays in the same newspapers that report climate change.
• The noise from the Oxford bypass that we can hear in our back garden 24 hours a day.
• The fact that people drive rather than cycle to the sports centre down the road, probably to go on exercise bikes when they get there.
• The fact that the Government spends 100 times more on building new roads than on helping people put up solar panels and insulate their houses.
• Red tape that prevents people from acting locally, such as health and safety restrictions on using waste food to feed pigs.