Welcome back. The holidays are over, the kids have got those start-of-term blues and energy bills have shot through the roof (again). If that’s not enough, Alistair Darling says the economy’s facing its worst conditions for 60 years. And – you may have missed this one – a professor at University College London has published a cheery book, Seven Years to Save the Planet. Bill McGuire, the author, runs the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, so probably knows a bit about risk. The biggest difference is that climate change will drive more and more of our decisions.