This is how your world could end

In an extract from his book Ends of the World, Peter Brannen examines mass extinction events and the catastrophic outcome of rising temperatures for all the world’s populationMany of us share some dim apprehension that the world is flying out of control, that the centre cannot hold. Raging wildfires, once-in-1,000-years storms and lethal heatwaves have become fixtures of the evening news – and all this after the planet has warmed by less than 1C above preindustrial temperatures. But