Doomed, we're all doomed!

I'm not joking. The only levity to be gained from this very credible report (abstract only) is that by the time we hit 6C above norm (in 2100), I will be dead. It's sad that the best I can hope for in my life is that it will be over by the time that mass human, animal and vegetable extinction occurs. Still, it'll make life interesting for our children and grandchildren.

The media coverage suggests that it's possible to avert this utter disaster - but the scientist points out that emissions have risen over the past decade, by 29%. Every opportunity we're given to take climate change seriously, we've avoided. Our politicians pay lip service and we chuck the occasional newspaper in the recycling bin, but as a race, we don't really believe that what's going to happen will happen. It's too far off or too complicated.

My students think it's hilarious (or embarrassing) that I don't drive and that I'm genuinely terrified of the consequences. They just don't care enough to change their lives - and to be fair, we need to change society far more radically than swapping to recycled loo paper or unplugging iPod chargers.

The current plan is to try to limit temperature change to 2C above the norm - leading to aberrant weather, migration, some extinctions: bad, but not awful. Can we do it? Can we bollocks:

"This is very different to the trend we need to be on to limit global climate change to 2C [the level required to avoid dangerous climate change]." That would require CO2 emissions from all sources to peak between 2015 and 2020 and that the global per capita emissions be decreased to 1 tonne of CO2 by 2050. Currently the average US citizen emits 19.9 tonnes per year and UK citizens emit 9.3 tonnes.

Now back to an Othello lecture - it fills in the time before I gratefully shuffle off this mortal coil.