This is like playing Russian roulette with a Luger rather than a revolver. One bullet, one chamber - and we're pulling the trigger.

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.

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

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.

Once the 'portals of the future close - in Amazonia, Siberia or the Arctic - we will find ourselves powerless to affect the outcome of this dreadful tale.

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.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that climate change means we'll have to sacrifice our creature comforts. But it doesn't have to be that way.