Sublime

As they expand, many of the world’s fast-growing cities end up building over floodplains, forests, and wetlands that could absorb rising waters during a storm or hold reservoirs of water during a drought.

The deep-sea cores and ice cores have revealed that climate change could indeed be incredibly rapid – just as Russell Coope had predicted – with big swings happening in just decades. As we look deep into the past, over vast stretches of time, the apparent stability of geography and climate that we perceive as individuals melts away, and we see inst

for more than three-quarters of the world’s economy. As they expand, many of the world’s fast-growing cities end up building over floodplains, forests, and wetlands that could absorb rising waters during a storm or hold reservoirs of water during a drought.

Our professional and technological capabilities have been increasing exponentially, but our ability to use them wisely has not. We are building vast, complex civilizations, but that very complexity is in danger of overwhelming us, creating huge and unintended consequences for the planet and all those that inhabit it.

China’s communications, as well as the managing of its fragile environment – dependent on water, threatened by floods – required an unusual degree of bureaucratic liaison between centre, province and district.

By 1960, research on deep-sea cores was suggesting that major temperature shifts of 5 to 10°C had taken place on timescales of less than a thousand years.