> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 February 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407068817
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400

The Last Generation

How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change



Impeccably researched and explained survey of the evidence for imminent dramatic climate change.

Climate change is not a matter of gradually increasing temperatures. New scientific findings about how our planet works show that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure, it lurches into another mode of operation. Man-made global warming is on the verge of unleashing unstoppable planetary forces. Biological and geological monsters are being woken, and they will consume us. Virtually overnight Nature's revenge will be sudden and brutal, like a climatic tsunami sweeping across the globe. No question, we are the last generation to live with any kind of climatic stability.
In this impassioned report, Fred Pearce travels the world on the story to end them all. Most troubling, while visiting the places where the action may start: deep in the Amazon, high in the Arctic and among the bogs of Siberia, he uncovers the first signs that nature's revenge is already under way.

  • Published: 1 February 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407068817
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400

About the author

Fred Pearce

The Times described Fred Pearce recently as one of Britain's finest science writers. An author and journalist based in London, he has reported on environment, popular science and development issues from over 60 countries over the past 20 years, specialising in global environment issues. He is the environment and development consultant for the New Scientist and writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent the Times Higher Education Supplement and Country Life. In the US he has written for the Boston Globe, Audubon Magazine, Foreign Policy, Seed, Popular Science and Time and has written reports and extended journalism for WWF, the UN Environment Programme, the Red Cross, UNESCO, the World Bank and the UK Environment Agency. He is syndicated in Japan, Australia and elsewhere and his books have been translated into at least ten languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish.

He was voted BEMA Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and has been short-listed for the same award in 2000, 2002 and 2003. He is a past recipient of the Peter Kent Conservation Book Award and the TES Junior Information Book Award.

He is a regular broadcaster on radio and TV, and has given public lectures on all six continents in the past two years.

'Fred is one of the few people that understand the world as it really is' - James Lovelock, scientist

'[Fred is] one of my heroes' - Rt. Hon John Gummer MP, former UK environment secretary

Praise for The Landgrabbers:

'Brilliant: Fred Pearce has lifted the lid on an issue that has yet to register with most people. Anyone who cares about the fate of the planet should read this.' Chris Mullin


Fred's books include: The Landgrabbers, Peoplequake, Deep Jungle, When the Rivers Run Dry, The Last Generation, Confessions of an Eco Sinner and Ian and Fred's Big Green Book for children.

Also by Fred Pearce

See all

Praise for The Last Generation

A crystal clear wake-up call from one of the finest science writers in the world.

Dr Jeremy Leggett

Apocalyptic in its vision, but never scare-mongering, The Last Generation superbly explains and dramatizes both the causes and the consequences of climate change. One reads it both gripped, and deeply alarmed.

Robert Macfarlane

We are now at war with Gaia and have no chance whatever of winning. Fred Pearce's scholarly and thoughtful book analyzes the battlefield and will guide us in a sensible retreat to the place where we can negotiate a peace.

James Lovelock

This book is a sober illustration of how little we have actually grasped of the reality of the economic damage and human catastrophe already caused by anthropogenic Climate Change. In pulling together all the major scientific work from the last 40 years into a coherent and highly readable form, Fred Pearce has sounded the final warning. It is as if we are all on a plane with the auto-pilot set to crash. Pearce is unashamedly frank in telling it like it is and, even more frighteningly, that it's only going to get worse. This book is a call to action that we dare not ignore.

The Rt Hon John Gummer MP

Pearce's book does a superb job of surveying the evidence which demonstrates that we are changing the world's climate. He gives an engaging, lucid and balanced account, with emphasis on both the certainty that "business as usual will produce basically a different planet" and the uncertainties as to detail, particularly time scales. This is a powerful book about the most important event in human history. Read it.

Professor Lord May OM FRS, Oxford University

One of Britain's finest science writers. He is a sceptic of the best sort, saying nothing until he has seen the truth of it for himself.

Richard Girling, The Sunday Times

Pearce is no idle Jeremiah...his book signals a shift of tone in the popular debate...The Last Generation makes you feel that we know enough now to conceive of the problems ahead. And anticipating a problem is half way to being able to do something about it.

James Flint, The Daily Telegraph

It is not a book for the faint-hearted, but if you want to read a well-researched book that makes the science accessible and exiting, The Last Generation is an ideal choice.

Fiona Archer, www.ecozine.co.uk

No one...is suggesting that this is a relaxing read, but it's certainly a necessary one.

The Good Book Guide

Very readable...Pearce is excellent at explaining the fantastically complex interrelationships of Earth systems.

Steven Poole, The Guardian

This is the most frightening book that I have ever read...everyone should read this book to find out what is going wrong with the world.

John Gribbin, The Independent