I didn’t understand how, but there was a chance that things might be OK. There was an operation underway to minimize the effects, to recapture the carbon and neutralize the other stuff. Meanwhile, finally, we were cleaning up our act, for all the good that would do. All fossil-fuel plants had been closed, all flights had been stopped, and forests were being intensively planted in an attempt to try to push the genie back into the bottle. I didn’t read the science: I just looked at the numbers. Seventy per cent, they think. Seventy per cent we all die. Thirty per cent, somehow, life continues, though it might be through gas masks.

Seventy per cent was a lot. If I got that in a test at college I would be quite pleased.

One minute you’re walking in the park, pretending to be at a party. Then you discover that the next nine months will probably be your last. Everyone’s last: a reverse gestation. You realize that you happen to be alive at the time when your species becomes extinct, and you wonder whether any part of you could come to find that quite interesting.

You have to decide whether to go with it meekly like you usually do, or to do something brave, to live your last months with all the energy and bravery you can muster, to rage against the dying of the light.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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