“We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit,” wrote J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782). “Those who live near the sea, feed more on fish than on flesh, and often encounter that boisterous element. This renders them more bold and compromising.”

In March 2018 authorities in Alexandria, Egypt, began removing five hundred residents from their homes along the Al Mahmoudeya canal—dug in 1820 under orders from Viceroy Mohamed Ali—and into high-rises. “There are many areas,” says Alexandrian climate scientist Mohamed El Raey, “that are located at least three meters below sea level. They will have to be abandoned and the people relocated.” Estimates suggest near-term rise in sea levels will inundate a third of the city.

In 1938 Guy Stewart Callendar published a paper titled “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature.” “It may be said that the combustion of fossil fuel…is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways,” concluded Callendar. “The small increases of mean temperature would be important on the northern margin of cultivation, and the growth of favorably situated plants is directly proportional to the carbon dioxide pressure. In any case, the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely.”