The evidence is overwhelming that human - produced climate change is having dramatic effects on our planet. Questions remain about how catastrophic and rapid the changes will be, and how soon they will be irreversible. However, faced with daily concerns and smaller crises, educated citizens of the world find it hard to worry about our unknown future; and even more difficult to see what if anything they can do to avert the predicted crises. What's more, under the influence of corporate propaganda and nationalistic demagogy, substantial numbers remain in ignorance and denial.

The World Tomorrow presents in stark visual form what future generations may face under each of five scenarios: climate destablization, rising water, mass extinction, a new ice age, and massive conflagration. Through photographs modified via Photoshop, one sees scenes of London, Paris, and Pisa, entirely flooded and abandoned; Sydney and San Diego devastated by fire; Chicago and Singapore engulfed in storms; Seattle in ruins, battered by the ocean; Brussels, London, and New York encased in ice; the Acropolis covered in vegetation; and Mount Rushmore and the China's Great Wall overcome by desertification. Accompanying text summarizes information about ongoing environmental changes and predictions about their future impact. Also included are quotations from scientific panels, world leaders, philosophers, theologians, and humanists.

A final chapter envisions what the world could look like in the event that governments responded to the crises with political and economic action. Unfortunately, the list of potential solutions (organic farming, encouraging of carpooling, better labeling of household products, replacing coal mines with wind farms) seem, in my pessimistic view, utterly inadequate. Without substantial declines in human population and/ or standard of living (things no governing body dares to advocate), events will take their inexorable course.

One potential criticism of this work is that taken too literally, the five bleak scenarios presented are incompatible (a given region cannot simultaneously be subject to rising sea levels, ice floes and conflagration). The apparent contradiction reflects uncertainties over which of the various scenarios is most likely to affect a given region at a given time. Nevertheless, this book helps shake the complacency of readers who forget the many previous civilizations that died through mismanagement of resources and inexorable climate change – and who ignore the irrefutable fact that we too shall pass from the scene. ( )