https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/25/climate-crisis-future-emergency

Ian Jack

Despite all the analogies for this possibly terminal emergency, it is unlike anything that has come before

Sat 25 Sep 2021 03.00 EDT

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Writing in 2003, the American environmentalist Bill McKibben observed that although “some small percentage” of scientists, diplomats and activists had known for 15 years that the Earth was facing a disastrous change, their knowledge had almost completely failed to alarm anyone else.

It certainly alarmed McKibben: in June 1988, the scientistJames Hansentestified to the US Congress that the world was warming rapidly and human behaviour was the primary cause – the first loud and unequivocal warning of the climate crisis to come – and before the next year was out, McKibben had published The End of Nature, the first book about climate change for a lay audience. But few others seemed particularly worried. “People think about ‘global warming’…