Twenty years ago, in The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he argues, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already underway. Our old familiar planet is melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning in ways humans have never seen. We’ve created a new planet, still recognisable but fundamentally different. In Eaarth, McKibben surveys the changes already taking place and considers what they will mean for our future.

Adapting to our new home won’t be easy. It will be expensive – and the natural resources on which our economy is built have been damaged and degraded. Our survival depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back, concentrating on essentials and creating the kinds of communities that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change – fundamental change – will be our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.