When the inter-governmental Panel on climate Change (IPCC) met in Auckland in early February this year, this group was widely reported as being ‘increasingly certain’ that the atmosphere was warming and that is was due to the burning of fossil fuels. Individuals at the meeting talked of dramatic changes in climate around the globe, of ice-caps melting, of large-scale inundation of low-lying land and of catastrophic consequences for human populations. Recent official publications in New Zealand have confirmed these judgements, speaking of global temperature rises of between 1 and 3.5 percent and sea level rises of half a metre over the next century.