The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

Uninhabitable Earth; Life After Warming by David Wallace-WellsUsually, 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!

Reading the first section of this book is a sobering experience. From the first sentence the author makes a convincing (and alarming) case that humanity will suffer greatly during the next 30 years (as well as far beyond) because of the devastating effects of climate change. Short, succinct chapters call the reader's attention to the inescapable fact that the Earth will get warmer, threatening our air, water, land, and eventually our basic existence. The only major question is how much warmer? The answer is of course complex, and depends on human behavior and climate forecasts. Sure to happen will be a serious increment of warming and the resulting major problems, but lack of effective action now will produce even greater warming and catastrophes. The author draws upon research from scientists to make his case, and gives their ideas without the overabundant caution scientists seem forced to use. Thus, the reader gets the essential message: "It's worse, much worse, than you thought".Unfortunately, this book suffers from several flaws that I found annoying and distracting:1) Some of the later chapters are confusing and poorly written, as the author struggles to make sense of humans' inability to address the causes of climate change, and to often even acknowledge the threat.2) He repeatedly states that many actions which will slow climate change are available and known, but he should have written a clear chapter which summarized them.3) The projections and various forecasts made during the book are sometimes inconsistent.4) The chapter on Capitalism's future seemed mushy, but in fairmess, this topic deserves an entire book on its own.Overall, this book would have greatly benefited from a thorough editing job by someone like Malcolm Gladwell, who I admit is one of my favorite "science writers". However, I applaud the author's courage to boldly show us our dismal future.

Drought, heat waves, freshwater scarcity, wildfires, sea level rise, extreme weather, floods, disease, changing eco-zones, crop yield decline, hunger, ocean acidification, dead zones in the ocean, mass extinction (of species), changes to oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems, plagues emerging from thawing tundra and melting ice, expanding tropics and expanding tropical diseases, economic collapse, climate refugees, violent conflicts rooted in climate change, the list of unfortunate consequences of climate change is long. Climate change isn’t just about polar bears and hurricanes, and it has already begun.We have already left behind the narrow window (Goldilocks range) of environmental conditions and temperatures that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place. Island countries are disappearing, Bangladesh is likely to be largely submerged mid century resulting in tens of millions of refugees, the Yemen, Sudan, and Syrian conflicts were preceded by draughts caused by or made much worse by climate change. It will be much worse at 2 degrees Celsius, and much worse than that at 2.5 degrees Celsius, and even worse at 3 degrees Celsius, etc.Climate change may not be the direct cause of all of these phenomena, but it is exacerbating them, or as the military calls it, it is a threat multiplier. This is not a book about the science of warming; it is about what it means to the way we live on this planet. The author notes that climate change doesn’t end in 2100 even though most projections do. He says that what follows 2100 is likely the century of hell. I should say that even though the book is not about the climate science, what he describes is based on the science and there are several hundred notes and references at the end of the book organized by page.It is a frightening and perhaps a depressing book, but it doesn’t predict the end of the world, it predicts a world that is much worse and partially unlivable, but how bad it gets depends on what we do today. What is missing is political will. The author does not discuss solutions much, but he seems to support a carbon tax, but I believe his chief intention is help his readers understand the seriousness of the situation as well as pointing out wrong attitudes. Believing we are all going to die in 10 years is not only inaccurate but fosters despondency and inaction. Denial or the downplaying of the problem is, of course, not helpful either. He states that personal choices, such as not eating meat, or driving less, are helpful but not enough. He stresses that political solutions are crucial. Personally, I favor a carbon fee and dividend approach, putting a price on carbon at the source and then returning the proceeds to households. It is very effective in reducing carbon emissions while not hurting the economy and helping the poor.He said some things that may be controversial among some environmentalists but that I agree with. Nuclear Power is not as dangerous as it has been made out to be and it is a carbon free source. GMOs could help us fight hunger as the effects on agriculture from climate change set in. Some things I don’t agree with. He is dismissing Nick Boström’s concern about Artificial Intelligence gone wrong a little too quickly. As someone with a background in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics I have to say that this is a real concern. I also think that he is not characterizing neoliberalism and capitalism correctly, well it depends on what you mean. Denying the existence of economic externalities is plain stupid but free markets and free trade that includes regulations or price mechanisms to account for externalities such as climate change can be part of the solution rather than a cause of it.In summary; the beginning of the book, with all the dark projections was a little bit heavy. However, overall, I found this to be a well written, interesting and engaging book that in the end was a pleasure to read. I learned something from it.

I can't say enough great things about this important book. It's far and away the best book on climate change and its consequences that I have read. Clear, informative, well-researched and truly a riveting page-turner. I couldn't put it down, learned so much from it and have given several copies as gifts. Read this book and you will probably stop what you're doing and become an ardent environmental activist, if you are not already. It shows with compelling evidence and rich detailed narrative that the climate apocalypse is well underway, the disasters we keep hearing about are here now, not sometime in the future, changes are already happening and lives and communities are being lost and forever changed. Wide swaths of Earth are becoming uninhabitable and unfarmable. The oceans are dying. Species are rapidly going extinct and the continued existence of humanity is threatened. I refer back to this book again and again. I keep it at arm's length and I'm guessing many others do too. I even bought a Kindle copy too so I can find references and topics quickly by searching. Most people have heard of climate change but have no idea what's really going on.

Even as an avid reader, I found this book to be quite difficult to digest. It has its "pros and cons" and a healthy dose of patience will be required to get through it.The content is factual, sobering, and frightening enough. However, the sentence structure is generally awkward throughout: too many appositives, misplaced phrases and adjectives, lengthy run-on sentences, and a somewhat rambling, disjointed writing style, often detract from the overall flow and continuity of the perilous message that the author seeks to convey to the reader. I found myself rushing through the book to reach the ends of each section rather than taking time to reflect and process logically the information presented.In a nutshell, the author paints an "alarmist" picture of what he thinks is in store for humanity if humans (on a global scale) do not, by the middle of the twenty-first century, begin to practice remedial mitigation actions toward reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions...infused with a decided right-wing political bias.The book, however, is well-researched and the extensive, page-indexed reference notations at the end are a useful, albeit somewhat cumbersome, tool for the serious student or researcher of climate change.

This book opens with what, for me, was a surprise. I know that carbon emissions have, world-wide, steadily increased even since the first international "climate mitigation agreements" of thirty years ago. What I did not know is that since 1990, the world, collectively, has pumped twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as it did in the thirty years from 1960 to 1990. There are other surprises: Bitcoin anyone? Sure there's some electricity involved but how much could that be? It turns out to be about as much, per year, as one million international jet flights! Our own industrial activity is only a part (albeit still a large part) of the problem now. Other, cascading effects, are now adding their impact. Global wild-fires now consume, on average, ten times as much forest every year as they did thirty years ago. That's a lot of extra carbon. Even worse, the world's permafrost is beginning to melt releasing carbon in the form of methane which, depending on whether we are speaking of low or high altitude, has between four and eighty times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.The title of the book is prescient. Think of the climatologically worst environments on the Earth today (having warmed a bit more than one degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1800. We are on track to hit two degrees by 2050 or so), perhaps the middle of the Sahara, or someplace where it never stops being hot and raining. These are today's most inhospitable climate environments. By 2100, that sort of place will be among the best and most livable we have on Earth. Large parts of our world will be largely and literally uninhabitable, places where humans die because their bodies cannot cool themselves by sweating unless immersed in cool water, or because there is no water the glaciers being gone, and this at only three degrees of warming (2100).The first third of the book is about various cascades, most already triggered, some on the verge. Effects of warming that add up both by directly making things worse, and by degrading the planet's ability to absorb carbon and mitigate the other effects. Wallace's picture here is very dire. In the rest of the book Wallace deals with the economic, political, social, and psychological future. Here I do not think he is dire enough. He speaks of refugees in the tens of millions (try hundreds), extremist movements on both the right and left, of wars, pandemics, crop failures, of collapsing economies unable to sustain the cost of climate mitigation, and that only the economies that can afford any mitigation to begin with. The rest will have since joined the refugees. Wallace touches on all of this, but I do not think he fully appreciates how quickly and thoroughly human beings can (and will) turn on one another long before this all becomes as bad as it's going to get!Technology will not save us. Wallace covers that too. We can desalinate water and even pull carbon out of the air. There will never be enough of either that the world can afford. Besides, both are energy intensive processes and even if powered with renewable energy, that is not easy to do as concerns the chain of activities that must be powered to build and maintain that technology. Rare-Earth mining is a very dirty business.In the end, Wallace is hopeful, though not optimistic, that the global polity will wake up and de-carbonize the global economy, not in time to halt two to three degrees of warming, it is already too late for that, but in time to prevent it going to four degrees or more. I think he is over-optimistic here too. It is simply not possible, politically, and this for economic reasons, for soon-to-be nine-billion humans to de-carbonize as quickly as needed to hold the line at two to three degrees. What will force the race to de-carbonize will be economic collapse, leading to socio-political collapse, leading to mass death (over some decades) from starvation, disease, or war. I think Wallace sees this grim possibility. He hopes it isn't inevitable.This a good and timely book though I doubt it will have much effect on the carbon trajectory of our so-called civilization. It is good to see the ground covered as much as Wallace covers it. He does a good job of showing how the climatological and the political go together (alas perversely). I think he fails to draw some obvious conclusions from his own well-made points. Perhaps it's for the better. He would be accused of doom saying. I am a doomsayer! Feel free to accuse me! Meanwhile, the book is frightening enough as it is!

As jeremiad, David Wallace-Wells Uninhabitable Earth does a fine job of covering a litany of threats with which global warming threatens us. Presenting a range of scientific studies to show us numerous worst-case scenarios, the author captures the reader's attention. Horrible weather, massive migration, economic collapse, shrinking food supplies, increasing conflict, spreading disease paint a dark future for the species. If all he sees comes to pass, our failure to address climate change is truly criminal.Is it possible that somebody can read science the way Hal Lindsey reads the Bible? David Wallace-Wells apocalypse may be such a work. Seventeen scientists at Climate Feedback conclude that Wallace-Wells book weighs the most catastrophic scenarios about climate change too heavily in his narrative. The good news if these scientists are correct is that we are unlikely to have an uninhabitable earth in the immediate future. The bad news is global warming is happening, and it poses some significant problems even if those problems are not apocalyptic for those living in the United States.It is prudent to try to manage greenhouse gas emissions to reduce global warming given the current temperature trajectories. Climate skeptics are probably wrong given the consensus of mainstream scientists. It is still possible they are right, but if 90% of people believe global warming is happening and sea levels will rise by an amount to flood your city, it would be prudent to build a flood management system. For a country like Bangladesh, climate change may displace 30 million people. If we use the statistical probability of this happening as 90%, the average displacement of people will be 27 million people. This problem is a huge problem and deserves considerable resources to try to manage harms of such great magnitude. The government of Indonesia is moving the capital of its country from Jakarta, already prone to flooding, to Borneo. Big problems require big solutions.As can be seen, climate change poses some substantial problems requiring substantial resources to mitigate the harms that it portends. The problem of Wallace-Wells' work is it is too likely to contribute to alarm and despair as opposed to thoughtful management of a range of problems that increasing temperatures will create. The greatest fear I had after reading his work is the potential of his work to empower some of the extreme responses that he so nicely chronicles in his book. Does a dark picture of the planet's future inspire eco-terrorists? Could it produce mono-maniacal political movements that lack the flexibility to deal with a range of governance issues that impact the quality of people's lives? Will alarmism empower radical policy actions that will negatively impact human welfare?Wallace-Wells has considered some of these negative possibilities, and he wants us to hopefully embrace the challenge of environmental stewardship. One of my favorite parts of the book is where he finds himself citing the musings of scientists who speculate the reason that we have not detected intelligent life in other parts of the universe is that such life may have been extinguished by the industrialized civilizations that they have created. This kind of grand cosmic pessimism is countered by the possibility that advanced civilizations have become so efficient at harnessing their energy that they emit no heat signals that we might be able to detect. These ending musings help to place Wallace-Wells' work in context. He is a reasonably accomplished writer who helps us to see a particularly unattractive vision of our future. Such literature is useful if it does not paralyze people from thoughtful engagement with the world and its problems and empowers them to improve the human condition at the margins.

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.

This is an exceptionally thought provoking and shocking book. It brings the facts about the climate change crisis that we are living through into stark reality - it does not play up the facts , just states them and offers a rage of possible outcomes based on the variation data, and in human kinds response.The first 3 chapters are dark and depressing, so persevere , because the best comes later, the hope , the optimism and 'what can I do' . I listened to it as an Audible book and I think had I been reading it age by page, I might have not got past the tough sections early on.It makes no apologies for what it tells us - it needs not - it is scientific data collected and mapped against historical temperature and climate mapping that science has retrieved from the various sources of stored 'natural data' on the planet.Like the author I am no 'super greeny environmentalist' just a normal Joe whos been living in ignorance to my contributions, just like nearly all of us. This book is the wake up call I wish I'd had years ago, though as a race we've had several chance to change direction and we have not.At the end of this book, I have been moved powerfully into three directions of change in my life:1 - Challenge and change my habits to contribute less to the cause of the problem2 - Appreciating that my actions alone do little, I have gifted this book and audible copies to as many influencers that I have access to, who may make decision in their work life that will affect more people - my boss, a property developer, Directors of companies, Operations managers in large companies!3 - I've accepted that preventing climate change of every kind is impossible - we are living through it now, there is a time lag on it and so if all necessary action was completed tomorrow (LOL!!) we would still have a further 20 years of change to face that we have created already! - SO I am re-evaluating, where I live , where my children should be encouraged to live, what skills are important to learn, or maintain, what careers and vocations my kids should consider as they become adults and most importantly nurturing them to be adaptable and natural problem solvers - there's a lot of change around the corner - we've lived through unprecedented decades of security, stability , wealth and prosperity, none of that garunteed moving forward.That's a sad reality, but turned another way its an adventure of opportunity ahead - this book has woken me up and given me hope, not about stopping or reversing climate change, but about my children and childrens children surviving it!