Although we are well aware that climate-induced disasters are bound to occur, British historian Geoffrey Parker argues in Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth CenturyLink opens in a new window , ‘we still convince ourselves that they will not happen just yet (or, at least, not to us), and so fail to take appropriate action.’ Parker’s unnerving account of policymakers always remaining ‘one disaster behind’ is as topical now as it was when his analysis of the seventeenth-century "Little Ice Age" Link opens in a new windowwas first published in 2013. On Wednesday 22 November 2017, the GHCC’s Global History Reading Group convened to discuss selected sections from Parker’s revised edition, published in July 2017. Adrianna Catena and Guido van Meersbergen report on what was a lively and instructive meeting.