Bill McGuire’s book Hothouse Earth, released in March 2022 is a sobering account of the consequences of climate change and how we got here.

When the book went to press in March, Russia had invaded Ukraine and we were all looking down the barrel of massive rises in energy bills. I read the book in August, partly influenced by yet another scorching summer.

Hothouse Earth is a book rammed to the gills with hard facts of the causes, and consequences of climate breakdown, how the world has failed to act in a coordinated way and that worst is to come. It doesn’t take long to realise that generations of us are complicit, as we have all reaped the benefits of the industrial revolution. Would this be an attempt of the scientific community trying to exonerate it self? It’s hard to put aside the “I told you so” but a lot of scientist are angry, but now being exonerated by the exposure of the conspiracy by industries and governments to silence them and obfuscate facts.

Bill takes us back 250 years to the genesis with the start of the industrial revolution and a wig maker in Derbyshire called Arkwright. He then takes us further back millions of years on a journey as to how our earth evolved so that we all understand how robust or fragile the Earth is and the many changes it has undergone. Importantly he explains how we understand how our weather system works, although it is a difficult and complex mechanism.

McGuire is one of those scientist who is being brutally honest, there is no sugar coating of the tsunami heading our way. He is critical of people he knows working in climate science who in public try to message optimism about averting a bad situation but in private are very worried. The 1.5 degree rise ship sailed long ago and we are now looking a 2-3 and that’s conservative. The consequences of what should have been 10 years away is now hitting us.

We all witnessed on our TV’s, Black Summer in Eastern Australian 2019-20, forest fires in the USA in winter! but it seems we never really get it until it happens to us. The UK summer of 2022 was predicted but in typical “Don’t Look Up” fashion the issue has always been people don’t like being told they have to change. When 16 homes burned down in a wild fire outside London, interviews with the public centred around the impacts of climate change.

The most frightening message of this book is it’s going to get worse. During the pandemic, world economic activity dropped, the skies were clear and smog’s lifted from cities. The impact on the composition of the climate was negligible. We are getting hotter temperatures that mean there will be more heat related deaths, people will not be able to venture out side, storms will regularly caused damage with torrential rain sweeping away communities. Huge ice storms, freezing temperatures trapping people in homes and cars. Harvests failing on an industrial scale with consequent famine. It doesn’t look good, it’s beginning to make the disaster films look like docu-soaps.

What is the purpose of this book? Is this a clarion call to action? It won’t be picked up and read by climate change deniers for sure. McGuire is savage about them in all their guise’s from industrialists, journalists to politicians. Those who have influenced governance that has resulted in totally unfit homes being built and subsidised the fossil fuel industry at the expense of low carbon technologies.

His message is don’t do nothing. If you can protest then do so, become active. We can all lower our carbon footprint and join the growing number on that journey. McGuire encourages us all to engage with friends, family and work colleagues even if they are climate sceptics.

McGuire shamelessly promotes his novel Skyseed, but it is a warning that techno-salvations can go horribly wrong. Our salvation will be in the sum of the actions and there needs to be lots of them.

When the politician knocks on the door asking for your vote challenge them. Where is the reforestation, natural carbon sequestration, low energy, low carbon buildings, repurposing of the built environment. Where is the education of professionals and trades and where is the coordinated legislation on standards necessary to prevent exploitation in a consumer society?

I can see the counter arguments from people saying it’s other countries causing the population, without regard to the citizen. I use the WWF “My Footprint” app to get some sort of measure of my carbon foot print. Mine is 7.71 against a UK average of 9.5 and world average of 6.76. A Chinese citizen is 7.38 and an Indian 1.91