of resistance to the evidence and in relation to the actors and agencies motivated to deny climate change. Lastly, he looks at some future scenarios and explains what people should do. Hamilton suggests that the foundations of climate change denial lie in the reaction of American conservatism to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He argues that as the "red menace" receded, conservatives who had put energy into opposing communism sought other outlets. Hamilton contends that the conservative backlash against climate science was led by three prominent physicists – Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow, and William Nierenberg. In 1984 Seitz, Jastrow and Nierenberg founded the George C. Marshall Institute, and in the 1990s the Marshall Institute's main activity was attacking climate science. When describing climate science, Hamilton says that official numbers published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are highly cautious, and so the real effects of climate change will likely be even more severe. His conclusion is that it will not be possible to stabilise emissions: ... even with the most optimistic set of assumptions – the ending of deforestation, a halving of emissions associated with food production, global emissions peaking in 2020 and then falling by 3 per cent a year for a few decades – we have no chance of preventing emissions rising well above a number of critical tipping points that will spark uncontrollable climate change. The Earth's climate would enter a chaotic era lasting thousands of years before natural processes eventually establish some sort of equilibrium. Whether human beings would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point. One thing seems certain: there will be far fewer of us. In terms of Australia, Hamilton says that "Australians in 2050 will be living in a nation transformed by a changing climate, with widespread doubt over whether we will make it to the end of the century in a land that is recognisably Australian". Reception Michael Lynn in The Common Review says that Requiem for a Species explores the gulf between acknowledgment and acceptance of climate change. Lynn explains that the gulf has two main origins and no easy solution: Hamilton ... argues that the gulf has two primary origins: the enormity of its consequences and the way it challenges how we as individuals and as societies have constructed our identities over the past three centuries. In doing