By Simon Hooper
Special for CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- "I want to scare you about climate change," says Fred Pearce, veteran environmental journalist and author. "We are probably the last generation to be able to rely on a stable climate."
Addressing a sympathetic audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Pearce is preaching to the converted about the reality and risks of climate change.
But it is his fear -- as the title of his new book, "The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change" (it is called "With Speed and Violence" in the U.S.), suggests -- that we still haven't fully realized the apocalyptic forces we have awoken and the reality of what is at stake if global warming continues untrammeled.
This is not just about warmer weather, environmental degradation and a looming refugee crisis, according to Pearce, but "about our survival as a species, as homo sapiens."
This year's series of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been broadly welcomed for a sober and sensible tone, which, while acknowledging the dangers of global warming, also suggested that our destiny was still in our own hands.
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more:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/18/last.generation/index.html