The world we were born into has gone. We shall never completely recapture its climate, its seasons, the way its plants grew and its animals lived. This is not a wild-eyed prediction, a man on the street with a placard. Respectable science knows it and says it. Nine of the world's ten warmest years since records were kept have occurred in the past fourteen years. Every month, an English garden moves south, climatically, by a distance of one hundred yards. Who is responsible? We are our habits. Can we prevent it? Too late. Can we moderate it, slow it, reverse it? Yes- if we try. This issue of Granta contains reports from the frontiers of environment change.


Contributors


Marion Botsford-Fraser


James Hamilton-Paterson


Matthew Hart


Thomas Keneally


Philip Marsden


Bill McKibben


Wayne McLennan


Plus: Christopher de Bellaigue, James Meek andNuha al-Radi in Iraq


New fiction from Maarten 't Hart and JonMcGregor


With a picture essay by Edward Burtynsky on our industrial landscapes.