This Overheating World

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 ("THE END IS NIGH"). 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. Some calculations suggest the average English garden moves south, climatically, by a distance of sixty-six feet every day. Who is responsible? We are — our habits. Can we prevent it? Too late. Can we moderate it, slow it, eventually reverse it? Yes — if we try. This outdoor issue of Granta reports from our present and future world, with writings from Edward Burtynsky, Marian Botsford Fraser, James Hamilton-Paterson, Thomas Keneally, Philip Marsden, and Bill McKibben. In addition, Christopher de Bellaigue, James Meek, and Nuha al-Radi offer insights in the new Iraq, along with a new story by Jon McGregor.