Over the last quarter of a century, physical geography has not been served well by the often homogenising influence of global change science, as exemplified by the structures and activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, certain areas of physical geography may have been at fault in being too little, and too uncritically, engaged with international, interdisciplinary research programmes in global environmental change. Moving forward, physical geography should look towards an independently constituted framework that incorporates the complexities of landscape response to both external forcing and internal feedbacks and, above all, works with others to prevent the socio-spatial injustices associated with climate change from being realised.