It goes beyond ice caps melting or bush fires. Imagine no drinking water, no fresh food or a wave of new plagues and diseases.

The scientific consensus suggests that we have already caused irreversible changes to our climate; changes which will only become more severe as sequestered carbon is released from melting glacial ice, burning forests, and warming oceans. Lowering our emissions is good - necessary, even - but this is only a tactic to stall the chain reaction that has begun. If we want to combat climate change in any real way, we should be directing resources towards researching and developing active carbon capture and storage, as well as abundant sources of energy to make these technologies viable at scale. The time for tweaking lifestyles and legislation has passed.