As I am sitting at my dining-room table, sipping wine, and puffing at a cigar, my eyes repeatedly light upon the lower left corner of the cover of a pretty book lying in front of me. It is a quote of something said or penned down by Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to Her Majesty’s Government. “Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today,” he warns, “more serious even that the threat of terrorism.” Of course, I am looking at The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge by Kirstin Dow and Thomas Downing. Rereading the inane quote over and over again over the last few days, I can at last envisage what Sir David’s valiant predecessor would have advised his sovereign’s government more than half a millennium ago: “The plague is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of witchcraft.”