Like many who watched the hurricane disaster strike New Orleans last year, I was shocked at the deprivations endured by the victims – left to fend for themselves in terrible conditions in the world’s richest country. It was shocking in itself, but I also felt something else: that this was a window into the future, a glimpse of what may be in store for us all if nothing is done about global warming.

I kept wondering: where next? How and what will happen as the world warms bit by bit? With up to six degrees of global warming on the cards over the next hundred years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), what will happen to our coasts, our towns, our forests, our rivers, our croplands and our mountains? Will we all, as some environmentalists suggest, be reduced to eking out a living from shattered remains of civilisation in Arctic refuges, or will life go on much as before – only a little warmer?

Mark Lynas