The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

Uninhabitable Earth; Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells Usually, I write a book review to share a sense of joy or insights or pleasure that I've gained from reading a book. Not so with this book. I'm writing this book review in an attempt to purge the angst that I suffered from reading it, to turn the sense of dread and potential for despair I often felt while reading it into something more positive, into courageous action. Can I succeed? I hope so, for my sake and for the sake of any reader. Wallace-Wells undertakes two tasks in this book. First, he brings us up to date with the latest climate science and the most reliable prognostications about the effects of climate change. The works of thousands of scientists converge around a variety of hellscapes that would make Dante swoon. As Wallace-Wells points out, we've been conditioned to think that climate change is just rising sea levels or some warmer temperatures here and there. It's not nearly so simple. It's not "I don't live near the coast, so what's my worry," because the problem is manifold and ubiquitous. No one can escape. Yes, sea levels will rise. Temperatures will rise so that some areas to become nearly unhabitable, especially around the Middle East and India (and having lived in northern India, I have a sense of what extreme temperatures feel like). Droughts and floods will increase in frequency and severity. Wildfires, as Americans have seen within the past year in California and the Pacific Northwest, will increase in severity and frequency. Severe weather events, such as hurricanes and tornados, will proliferate and become stronger. Get ready for the designation of a Category 6 hurricane. Established diseases will spread (malaria, dengue fever, and zika will move north), and new pathological organisms will evolve in our hothouse atmosphere. Crops will fail and yields decline. Nature will survive, of course, but species and whole ecosystems will disappear. We'll see Nature altered in ways that we don't recognize and won't enjoy. Human beings will be forced to migrate to survive. And conflicts will proliferate and intensify, from domestic quarrels (and undoubtedly physical abuse) to wars and civil unrest. We seem intent on creating a perfectly Hobbesian world of the war of all against all. Is Wallace-Wells just another alarmist? Is this just a book with cheap thrills like a 50's horror flick? I wish. Wallace-Wells went into this research and writing project as someone who was cognizant of climate change, but who didn't hold it front and center of his concerns until, as a journalist, he saw an increasing flood of scientific papers that revealed a much more frightening future than most of the media was reporting. What Wallace-Wells discovered disturbed him and frightened him. But he hasn't given up hope, and neither should we. In fact, the second portion of the book, after establishing the likelihood of various varieties of hell that we humans are creating for ourselves--and we are creating it, and we are choosing it--Wallace-Wells turns to our responses and how individuals, societies, and nations may respond to the increasing pressures that we face. We humans, like most of our fellow creatures here on Earth, have three instinctive responses to threats: fight, flight, or freeze (even faint). I couldn't help but think along these lines as I read about reactions (or the lack of response) to our increasingly certain knowledge. As a whole, we've chosen to faint, to swoon at the thought of what we've wrought and then distract ourselves from our plight. We play mind games with ourselves to distract ourselves from the challenge at hand, and 21st-century consumer capitalism is most willing to enable us to do this. The Republican Party in Congress tries to pretend that the science is wrong and the problem unreal, 'another liberal plot" they say. Some say its just "God's will" and take a fatalistic approach justified on some bit of Bible misreading. Others seek to flee through technological panaceas, some of which may prove useful, but none of which promise reliable remedy and none of which can be attempted without immense costs and tremendous uncertainty about unintended consequences. The super-rich investigate how to govern the bunkers they're building to try to escape the wrath of the masses who will seek both vengeance and access to the resources that the super-rich have squirreled away. (But the super-rich remain worried about how to keep their guardians from turning on them.) The last option is to fight (climate change, not my fellow humans), and that's the option I'll take. We'll suffer significant--if not devastating--dislocations. We'll continue to see all sorts of changes, natural, social, economic, political, and cultural. But as Wallace-Wells makes clear, we have options and the potential to dramatically reduce the suffering that the future holds for all humans if we don't take sufficient steps to alleviate our plight. And I believe--or at least I possess a ray of hope--that we humans can respond in time (and time is of the essence). Thomas Friedman recently quoted an elementary but valuable insight from economic thinker Eric Beinhoffer: "there are only two ways to cure political tribalism: 'A common threat or a common project.'” Friedman uses this point to recommend that we need to undertake a common project to repair the foundations of the middle class. I suggest that repairing the foundations of the middle class must be subsumed under the project of dealing with climate change, which is a common threat and can become a common project. Indeed, starting now, we must re-imagine our political structures, our political economy, our entire culture. We have the potential to use the impending catastrophes to attempt to build a more just society. We either seek a just and sustainable world, or we can expect increasing international strife and civil anarchy. The range of possibilities for political, economic, and cultural change is vast, from outcomes that will prove (reasonably) attractive to appalling possibilities for anarchy or totalitarianism (and every nightmare in between). In listening to a couple of interviews of author David Wallace-Wells (The Ezra Klein Show & The Joe Rogen Experience), I was relieved to learn that he has an infant daughter, born while he was researching this topic. This fact reinforces his fundamental commitment to strive for the best possible outcome of our climate challenge, and it lets readers know that his hopeful words (there are some) don't represent publisher mandated pablum for readers. Wallace-Wells has to believe that we can take effective action to reduce our suffering and that of those who will come after us. One final comment: Again, from interviews, suggestions have been made that millennials will face this problem and must live with the consequences. Of course, this is true. But we baby-boomers have overseen an almost obscene increase in carbon in the atmosphere in the period since Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006). We bear the burden of responsibility for addressing our planetary illness. Alleviating the devastation of climate change must be a cross-generational project. We must begin the think in Burkean terms: society is a contract among generations past, present, and future. (If only there were more true conservatives!) Please, read this book and ponder your response. What shall we choose?

This is a wonderful book. It's about climate change and the news isn't cheerful, but this is so well written it's a joy to read. The author does not dwell on how we got here and doesn't spend much time on what's happening right now. The book is about the future. Specifically the 80 odd years from now to 2100. As such it is speculation and admitted as such. But it is deeply informed speculation. The last two fifths of the book are notes and so you can read the same research and draw your own conclusions. Roughly the first half of the book is about the effects of the warming. As the author points out this is really a systems problem. These effects are interrelated and are all facets of a shared problem. As the author says, this isn't just about sea level rise, it's about agriculture, it's about economics, it's about population migration, many things. The bottom line? At 2100 the research shows a normal (bell shaped) distribution of temperature rise. On the good side the best we can hope for is 1.5 to 2 degrees centigrade. The fat middle part of the distribution is 3ish degrees. The bad side of the distribution is 4 to 5 degrees. What could happen at 3 or 4? For one we could have economic effects much worse than the Great Depression. The second part of the book is about why we don't respond to such a dire threat. This section is at least as interesting as the first part. I found this deeply fascinating as I didn't understand this as well. Many aspects worth considering. In short, I think you should read this book. Doesn't matter what side of the debate you're on it's worth considering these ideas. And if you disagree you can check out the literature and see why the author made the point that he did. And if you do agree, why are you not doing something about it? Buy this book!

Stunning. This is very late in coming -- maybe too late.

I can see no reason this shouldn't become a textbook for students in discipline areas such as business and biology. But more so, it is the book the politicians, environmentalists, naysayers and basically everyone on earth must read. It is a terrifying book, more so than any horror novel or work of science fiction. That we have done this to ourselves, and cannot likely undo it, makes this an even more compelling read. Read it now. Savour every dark turn of phrase, ever dark fact - and pray. Pray hard that humanity comes to its senses. If it was me I would award this work the Nobel prize in literature, that is how compelling its story is. Oh what might have been if we had just listened to ourselves. Well done dear author, well done.

A good read to know about the influences to climate changes and global warming. The font size is quite small for a comfortable read.

Boa introdução ao tema de mudança climática. Achei o livro muito bem escrito e bem organizado. Capítulos curtos, direto, mas sem perder estilo literário. O livro é grosseiramente dividido em duas partes. Uma apresentando os vetores resultantes do aquecimento global (queda da produtividade da agricultura, aumento no nível do mar, escassez de água potável, enchentes, secas, etc) e outro discutindo os vícios epistêmicos que engajamos, individual ou coletivamente, para não enfrentar o problema diretamente. A segunda parte é necessária, mas me interessou menos. A primeira parte do livro é onde está o melhor para mim, leigo no tema. A escala do problema é realmente difícil de exagerar e, mesmo em um canário otimista, veremos um bom número de tragédias climáticas nas próximas décadas. No pior dos casos, a própria existência da humanidade está em risco. O livro me chamou atenção também para as desigualdades climáticas. Tudo indica que o norte global será o menos afetado pelas mudanças climáticas (a Rússia provavelmente vai se beneficiar). O grosso da conta será pago pelo sul-global. Enfim, tem muitas descobertas que o livro oferece para um leigo. Se não leu nada ainda sobre o tema, recomendo iniciar com esse livro.

Perhaps the best book that I've read in years, containing comprehensive and well presented data on the climate crisis. Easy reading, yet incredibly informative, and disturbing as it should be.