By the author of the number one bestseller The Weather Makers comes a groundbreaking new book of vital importance for the future of humankind. Earth’s climate system is fast approaching a crisis. Public understanding has not kept up with the debate, and there is an absence of political leadership. Many people are less engaged with the issue of climate change than they were a decade ago, and opinion is divided between technological optimists and pessimists who feel that catastrophe is inevitable. Tim Flannery, bestselling author and one of the most influential scientists on the planet, is here to tell us that catastrophe is not inevitable, but time is running out. Around the world people are already living with the consequences of an altered climate—with intensified or more frequent storms, heat waves, droughts and floods. For some it’s already a question of survival. Atmosphere of Hope is timed for publication in the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris in December 2015. There will be enormous coverage of the Paris conference, which is widely acknowledged as our last chance to take decisive action on a global treaty to limit warming to 2C. This book will influence the debate generated by the Paris conference and will spark a new wave of conversations around this most important of subjects. Atmosphere of Hope is both a snapshot of the trouble we are in, and an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new possibilities for mitigating climate change. In his inimitable style, Tim Flannery makes this urgent issue completely accessible, a decade after the publication of his groundbreaking book The Weather Makers .