Climate change has been in the news for a while. Many clever people have been skeptical about it, but most of them accept it now, at least as a serious threat to future generations. However, the evidence is mounting that the threat may come much sooner than that. It may affect the living generations, too. Fred Pearce’s new book, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change,[1] which arrived in this morning’s mail, brings together all the scientific evidence the cleverest need that it is time to do something about it. As a journalist concerned with the environment, he has been covering climate change for a couple of decades. And he shows conclusively enough that the tipping points envisaged by many scientists studying climate change are within sight. As the title of his book shows, nature is not about gradual change. Our planet’s past is replete with momentous changes that took a few years only. But there is one tipping point that now deserves the full attention of the cleverest among the clever: the point at which they start thinking about themselves and their loved ones. This is the tipping point at which the least clever must be left behind. Or else.

Footnote

1. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.