In recent years, according to most experts, our planet has been experiencing rapid climate change. Global warming due to pollution and high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are forcing more and more people to endure scorching summers, extreme weather events, and prolonged periods of drought. This is not the first time in our long history that humans have had to contend with climate change.
What is worrying today is the rapidity of changes that in previous periods have lasted for hundreds or even thousands of years. For example, the last glaciation, which covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in ice, lasted from about 100,000 years ago until 12,000-10,000 years ago. It forced our ancestors to gradually adapt to an increasingly harsh climate. Adapting to sudden changes is not easy. A warmer atmosphere has more energy and therefore tends to intensify extreme weather events such as cyclones, tornadoes, and cloudbursts, which in turn would lead to floods, landslides, inundations, and increased hydrogeological instability. Another phenomenon linked to global warming is desertification, which affects a quarter of the world's landmass. Particularly affected are semi-arid zones such as the Sahel belt south of the Sahara Desert. High-risk areas also exist in Asia, Latin America, the United States, along the Mediterranean coast (including southern Italy), and Russia. Rising temperatures are also leading to the progressive melting of polar ice (Greenland, the Arctic, and Antarctica) and glaciers, thus leading to rising sea levels and the consequent risk of flooding coastal areas and many small islands.
These are all signs of change we're seeing before our eyes, accompanied by heat waves, extreme weather events, and prolonged periods of drought. The problem is that we often witness these events as mere spectators, as if we weren't the protagonists of what's happening, or worse, it didn't concern us.
This is the starting point of the beautiful popular essay A Brief History of the Earth (Sonda, 2026, pp. 244, also available as an e-book. Translated by Giuseppa Forte) by geologist and popularizer Alasdair Skelton, who takes us on a journey that unites science and humanity, from the birth of the Earth to today's fragile balances.
With a clear but hopeful outlook, the book presents the climate crisis as a turning point, not an end . What is over is the period in which we thought our behaviors had no decisive impact on nature. The end of an era, then, but not the end of hope and the possibility that we can reverse the trend. Hope is our most powerful force, Alasdair Skelton tells us...hope combined with knowledge. Understanding the climate means, in fact, still believing in ourselves and our future. And finding alternative, new solutions to act, change, and rethink our relationship with the Earth.
From this perspective, the message of A Brief History of the Earth is enlightening, especially for those who believe that not all is lost, who want to understand climate change without technicalities, and who seek a more humane and constructive vision of the planet's future.