At 1.24 am on 26 April 1986 Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor exploded after staff disabled safety systems and performed an ill-advised experiment to check – ironically enough – the reactor’s safety.

Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats which can be postponed until later.

Conventional economic theory... counts the depletion of resources as the accumulation of wealth.

We humans, one species of animal amongst millions, have now become the de facto guardians of the planet's climate stability.

The worst case scenario sees 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.

Only by advocating 'politically unrealistic' CO2 concentrations can runaway global warming be avoided. But what is politically realistic for humans is whollymunrelated to what is physically realistic for the planet.

Unless we decide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within just a few years from now, our destinies will already be chosen and our path towards hell unalterable as the carbon cycle feedbacks... kick in one after another.