We were hoping for big and bold thoughts to come out of this debate, and perhaps we can claim a modicum of success here tonight if this is indeed true:

Those of you who can’t bear the evening to end, we bring good news!

There are just five minutes remaining but here’s a curveball. Why should we read cli-fi at all?

So if it’s not over yet, where is cli-fi going to head in the future?

Fantasy, yeah we can see that:

Historical cli-fi, nice.

Megan may well to onto a winner here though:

A reassuring assertion from Kate Kelly that we would second:

A case in point:

Any other suggestions for unexpected environmental reads?

Having said that,

And #GdnEcoChat is full to brimming with recommended reading for teens looking to get in the know!

This is a very true point. The publishing scene 5 years ago looked very different for cli-fi. Can it all be down to the recession or is something else going on? How can we begin to bring things back round? The next 5 years may well be make or break time – any longer and it could be too late.

Authors Sarah Holding and Tony Bradman have been having a very interesting conversation about how to engage really young kids.

The risk is we won’t be able to see the woods for the trees (or what’s left of them anyway...)

Perhaps we just need to ask the hard questions and demand the hard answers...

There’s a little of agreement on here – but while we all know instinctively that climate change is very real, happening right now, and a massive problem, we’re dancing around the edges of what precisely to DO about it. Maybe (in an election year, no less), that’s enough?

This would be a tough one – where to start?

Any takers?

Excitement over, Sarah Crossnan has an unequivocal answer to our previous question:

Great question from Children’s Books site member – we’re up to the minute here!

There’s a big debate amongst the young at heart here about the threats of climate change vs. nuclear fallout. Worrying about the environment isn’t a new thing, nor are planetary pressures. The question is, can we ever see climate change as an immediate threat in the way the Cold War was? That may well be the biggest issue facing us today.

We are so philosophical this evening!

No we’ve no idea what it means either...

And, frankly, no webchat is replete without a liberal dose of French theoretic anthropology:

And we have to be realistic, there’s plenty beyond the world of books that needs doing:

This is very reassuring for all of us here tonight: indeed, this could be our entire raison d’etre:

While SF Said and Kate Kelly share holiday snaps, the Big Questions keep on rolling in. Here’s one from TheBookAddictedGirl, replete with an answer:

It’s not just climate change that we’re talking about here, however. There are so many more problems confronting our ecosystems.

How can we possible take on everything at once?

To all those thinking that ebooks might be the answer to our printing dilemma, Joshua A.P. has an excellent riposte:

Here’s one we’re going to ask the audience:

Any thoughts? Let us know at #GdnEcoChat or childrens.books@theguardian.com.

Kate Kelly has a sombre note to sound, however:

As if we didn’t all feel guilty enough already...

Interesting observation from Tony Bradman:

And Frank Cottrell Boyce agrees:

How useful are dystopias really as a way of thinking through environmental issues in that case? What kinds of stories do we need?

So many questions – this feels symbolic of a wider situation, somehow!

Given the facts below, it’s a little hard to see how this might be possible... What can we do to start changing our doom-and-gloom attitudes?

Questions, questions, questions:

Question the first:

Question the second:

You can pick the brains of our panel at anytime over the next hour, using #GdnEcoChat, or by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com.

And what better than an epic power ballad to get us in the mood!

Feeling galvanized? Let’s go!

The questions are beginning to trickle in. If climate change has anything to do about it, it’ll soon be a flood!

There may be plenty of things to fear, but missing out on the action tonight ain’t one of them.

There’s still plenty of time to add your questions. Either head to Twitter and start using #GdnEcoChat - if you want to address a particular participant then make sure to ask them directly (check out the list below) then they know who should answer what! - or email childrens.books@theguardian.com. Remember to keep your questions short as they still need to be tweeted by us, so aim for around 140 characters and head up your email “Climate change live Q&A”. (We’re an unimaginative bunch.)

Still feeling sceptical?

Russell Brand takes on a climate change denier – dontcha just know this is going to be good!

Here’s a little graphic that will shock your socks off

But hopefully not this far into the future…

(Curiously enough, this song is also the title of a book by Saci Lloyd, who will be joining us for #GdnEcoChat in just less than an hour. Spooky!)

Of course, one of the great things about fiction is precisely that we can give the crystal ball a bit of a polish and do some good hard future-peering.

It’s something that teen fiction is particularly good at...

“Climate change. We learn about it in school. We see it on the news and nature shows. We’re told it’s coming and it will be irreversible if we don’t do something. But we’re young. Most of us don’t listen, do we? We’re the internet, smart phone, computer generation and most of us aren’t clued up on renewable energy or carbon footprints.

And even when we know all about them, we often don’t think they affect us. I was like that, when I was younger. And then, then I read my first environmental disaster novel - a dystopian.

The idea of a futuristic world devastated by the very things that are affecting the environment now... It was terrifying - the idea that such horror and pain and fear could come from too many cars and forgetting to turn the light off (and cows - don’t forget cows guys: they produce loads of harmful gasses... via a fart!). It was like being really scared in an incredibly vivid way, so unlike all the textbooks I read about the subject before.

Yes, school teaches us a lot of things. Algebra. Science experiments. The difference between affect and effect. But when it comes to current events in the world around us, both environmental and political, does anything really beat a dystopian? Everyone should learn from the mistakes made in books - especially dystopias. If you look at the causes that lead to most dystopian societies, the catalyst is generally the destruction of the environment, or a world war or a huge nuclear explosion. All man-made problems – all things we could so easily stop…”

Read more from Children’s books site member and book blogger TheBookAddictedGirl here.

Let’s get our facts straight before we start peering too hard into our crystal ball. So when and how did we first find out about climate change, greenhouses gases, carbon emissions and all that jazz? Because, in the words of Guardian editor CP Scott, “comment is free, but facts are sacred”.

900-1300 – The Medieval Warm Period brings warm weather to Europe.

1350-1850 – The Little Ice Age chills parts of the northern hemisphere.

1712 – Thomas Newcomen invents the steam engine, leading the way for the Industrial Revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels.

1800 – The world’s population reaches one billion for the first time.

1824 – French physicist Joseph Fourier first describes the Earth’s natural “greenhouse effect”.

1860s – Irish physicist John Tyndall shows that gases like CO2 and water vapour retain heat, effectively proving the greenhouse effect.

1886 – Karl Benz invents the first car. Can you guess which car company still bears his name?

1955 – As lots of scientific research takes place in the early decades of the 20th century, aided by equipment such as early computers, US researcher Gilbert Plass analyses in detail the absorption of various gases and concludes that doubling CO2 concentrations would increase temperatures by 3-4C.

1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated (April 22 this year)

1972 – The first UN environment conference is held in Stockholm, but climate change is not priority.

1975 – The term “global warming” is publicised by US scientist Wallace Broecker.

1987 – The Montreal Protocol is agreed, which encourages countries to restrict the use of chemicals that damage the ozone layer.

1992 – At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, developed countries agree to return their emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels.

1997 – The Kyoto Protocol is agreed, setting the first emissions reduction targets for industrialized countries; it became international law in 2005 and ended in 2012. Find out who succeeded (and who needs to go on the naughty step) here.

1998 – The warmest year on record, caused by a combination of global warming and a strong El Nino effect.

2001 – President George W. Bush removes the US from its Kyoto targets.

2003 – A heatwave in Europe kills more than 30,000 people. Scientists later conclude that it is the first extreme weather event definitely attributable to human-induced climate change. A third of the world suffers from droughts, which is around double the figure for the whole of the 1970s.

2004 – The Day After Tomorrow is released, one of a slew of climate change-based fictions that year.

2011 – The earth’s population reaches seven billion.

2012 – Scientists measuring how much Arctic sea ice is left in summer find it reaches a minimum extent of 3.41 million sq km (1.32 million sq mi), a record low since measurements began in 1979. (Basically, the ice caps are melting.)

2013 – A report claims that scientists are 95% certain humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming. The average global temperature is 14.6°C, the warmest in thousands of years, and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches 397 ppm, the highest in millions of years.

Find out more here.