Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
4.5/5*
*review originally posted at https://lucywalker17181.wixsite.com/whatlucyreads/home/review-the-uninhabitable-earth-by-david-wallace-wells*
The Uninhabitable Earth is the kind of book that can change your life; the kind of book that'll shift your world on its axis. Or at least, it should. David Wallace-Wells chronicles the dark future that lies ahead of us - and, indeed, the dangerous times we are living in right now - should we continue along our current fossil-fuel-guzzling, indiscriminately-industrialising trajectory. He takes the shifting, somewhat incomprehensible spectre of climate change that haunts so many of us, and he shows it in the stark light of day. It's impossible to read this book and not be at least slightly affected by it.
What Wallace-Wells does well is capturing the utterly gargantuan scale of the climate problem. I feel part of the issue when it comes to global warming is that a lot of us are struck with a kind of inertia. The problem we are trying to take on is so huge, so complicated, and so closely tangled up in the way human civilisation operates, that we have no idea what to do - even when we want to do something - so we simply end up doing nothing at all. Wallace-Wells takes us methodically through every (or almost every) consequence of climate change from the obvious to the implicit, and in doing so, he says, "hey, this is what's happening; this is why it's happening; and this is what we ought to be doing about it." Unlike many climate change texts that overly focus on only one aspect of the problem, Wallace-Wells' approach actually inspires action (or, should I say, it will, once you've recovered from the bout of utter hopelessness you'll feel while actually reading this book), because it puts climate change firmly in context. For the first time, I feel like I can actually begin to see the whole issue, and so maybe - just maybe - I can do something about it.
If I had a criticism of this book (and I do - that's why it dropped half a star), it's that Wallace-Wells took an almost too egalitarian view of climate change responsibility, or as he calls it, "climate change guilt." Wallace-Wells certainly acknowledges that particular countries shoulder more "guilt" than others - China being primarily at fault - but he does not seem to distinguish, beyond the national level, exactly who carries the greatest obligation to combat climate change. Indeed, it is not China's rural poor whom we ought to be looking down our noses at for their irresponsible fossil fuel consumption. Rather, it is the Chinese government and the monstrous China-based multi-national corporations that carry the vast majority of responsibility for China's massive carbon footprint. It is governments and corporations who carry the power to make the structural changes required to halt climate change, and they too are the ones causing more global warming than every individual on this planet combined. Wallace-Wells scarcely, if ever, recognises this individual/organisation distinction in The Uninhabitable World. In fact, his tone very often feels accusatory, as if it is the reader herself who ought to feel ashamed for her planet-destroying actions. And perhaps she should, but personally I don't feel half as ashamed of myself as I do of my government. As such, this was not a five-star read for me.
That said, even though Wallace-Wells seems to neglect the extremely uneven distribution of climate change responsibility, it does not feel as though he ignores it completely. Indeed, this idea does seem to run through the book as an undertone, even though Wallace-Wells doesn't give it the attention it deserves. Overall, then, I definitely recommend this book. It will haunt you, it will affect you, and hopefully - on reflection - it will inspire you. If you're looking to read more non-fiction, pick this up. Oh, and if audiobooks are your thing, I recommend The Uninhabitable Earth on audio. Wallace-Wells narrates it himself and it's great. Happy reading, and don't forget, our planet is dying and we only have a matter of years to do something about it! Yay!
*review originally posted at https://lucywalker17181.wixsite.com/whatlucyreads/home/review-the-uninhabitable-earth-by-david-wallace-wells*
The Uninhabitable Earth is the kind of book that can change your life; the kind of book that'll shift your world on its axis. Or at least, it should. David Wallace-Wells chronicles the dark future that lies ahead of us - and, indeed, the dangerous times we are living in right now - should we continue along our current fossil-fuel-guzzling, indiscriminately-industrialising trajectory. He takes the shifting, somewhat incomprehensible spectre of climate change that haunts so many of us, and he shows it in the stark light of day. It's impossible to read this book and not be at least slightly affected by it.
What Wallace-Wells does well is capturing the utterly gargantuan scale of the climate problem. I feel part of the issue when it comes to global warming is that a lot of us are struck with a kind of inertia. The problem we are trying to take on is so huge, so complicated, and so closely tangled up in the way human civilisation operates, that we have no idea what to do - even when we want to do something - so we simply end up doing nothing at all. Wallace-Wells takes us methodically through every (or almost every) consequence of climate change from the obvious to the implicit, and in doing so, he says, "hey, this is what's happening; this is why it's happening; and this is what we ought to be doing about it." Unlike many climate change texts that overly focus on only one aspect of the problem, Wallace-Wells' approach actually inspires action (or, should I say, it will, once you've recovered from the bout of utter hopelessness you'll feel while actually reading this book), because it puts climate change firmly in context. For the first time, I feel like I can actually begin to see the whole issue, and so maybe - just maybe - I can do something about it.
If I had a criticism of this book (and I do - that's why it dropped half a star), it's that Wallace-Wells took an almost too egalitarian view of climate change responsibility, or as he calls it, "climate change guilt." Wallace-Wells certainly acknowledges that particular countries shoulder more "guilt" than others - China being primarily at fault - but he does not seem to distinguish, beyond the national level, exactly who carries the greatest obligation to combat climate change. Indeed, it is not China's rural poor whom we ought to be looking down our noses at for their irresponsible fossil fuel consumption. Rather, it is the Chinese government and the monstrous China-based multi-national corporations that carry the vast majority of responsibility for China's massive carbon footprint. It is governments and corporations who carry the power to make the structural changes required to halt climate change, and they too are the ones causing more global warming than every individual on this planet combined. Wallace-Wells scarcely, if ever, recognises this individual/organisation distinction in The Uninhabitable World. In fact, his tone very often feels accusatory, as if it is the reader herself who ought to feel ashamed for her planet-destroying actions. And perhaps she should, but personally I don't feel half as ashamed of myself as I do of my government. As such, this was not a five-star read for me.
That said, even though Wallace-Wells seems to neglect the extremely uneven distribution of climate change responsibility, it does not feel as though he ignores it completely. Indeed, this idea does seem to run through the book as an undertone, even though Wallace-Wells doesn't give it the attention it deserves. Overall, then, I definitely recommend this book. It will haunt you, it will affect you, and hopefully - on reflection - it will inspire you. If you're looking to read more non-fiction, pick this up. Oh, and if audiobooks are your thing, I recommend The Uninhabitable Earth on audio. Wallace-Wells narrates it himself and it's great. Happy reading, and don't forget, our planet is dying and we only have a matter of years to do something about it! Yay!
This was ok, and I definitely learned some things but it mostly felt like a scientific info dump at times that was too much for me.
So full of information I definitely think it's one you get more from on a second read.
Actually horrendous to think about the future of the earth if we continue as we are!
Actually horrendous to think about the future of the earth if we continue as we are!
I remember reading the book 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson where humans take to the stars and terraform the planets, but Earth is facing climate catastrophe. When they spoke about the time period historically, they spoke about the years 2000-2060 as The Great Dithering. It is a time period where everyone knew what was happening but chose to do nothing. This is the quandary we face. There are not enough key people who are willing to make the needed changes or make the sacrifice to stop human influence on warming the planet.
Enter David Wallace-Wells who states, dear reader, you want to know what climate change looks like, let me show you the horrors. If reading this book gave a facial experesssion it would be when the opened the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark where everyone's face melted off. Part of the planet is unlivable, millions dead, the inability to grow food, and more. It isn't something that will happen tomorrow, but it is on the horizon. There is a tipping point that is right in front of us. If you wanted ammunition to stop our Great Dithering, here is a good resource to use.
NOTES FROM
Life After Warming
David Wallace-Wells
September 13, 2019
[It is worse, much...]
because we were so sociopathically good at collating bad news into a sickening evolving sense of what constituted “normal,” and because we looked outside and things seemed still okay
September 14, 2019
Wildfire
The fact that warming is now hitting our wealthiest citizens is not just an opportunity for ugly bursts of liberal schadenfreude; it is also a sign of just how hard, and how indiscriminately, it is hitting. The wealthy used to build castles to defend themselves against the world; more recently it’s been a more modern kind of fortress—cities—enclosing more and more of us in an illusion of man-made security. All of a sudden, it’s getting a lot harder to protect against what’s coming.
September 15, 2019
Economic Collapse
to help buffer or offset the impacts, we have no New Deal revival waiting around the corner, no Marshall Plan ready. The global halving of economic resources would be permanent, and, because permanent, we would soon not even know it as deprivation, only as a brutally cruel normal against which we might measure tiny burps of decimal-point growth as the breath of a new prosperity. We have gotten used to setbacks on our erratic march along the arc of economic history, but we know them as setbacks, and expect elastic recoveries. What climate change has in store is not that kind of thing—not a Great Recession or a Great Depression but, in economic terms, a Great Dying.
September 15, 2019
Climate Conflict
For every half degree of warming, they say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. In climate science, nothing is simple, but the arithmetic is harrowing: a planet four degrees warmer would have perhaps twice as many wars as we do today. And possibly more.
September 15, 2019
Climate Conflict
In each case, climate is not the sole cause but the spark igniting a complex bundle of social kindling.
September 17, 2019
Storytelling
James Hansen, who first testified before Congress about global warming in 1988, has named the phenomenon “scientific reticence,” and in 2007 chastised his colleagues for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was. That tendency has metastasized over time, ironically as the news from research grew bleaker, so that for a long time each major publication would be attended by a cloud of commentary debating its precise calibration of perspective and tone—with many of those articles seen to lack an even balance between bad news and optimism, and labeled “fatalistic.” Some were derided as “climate porn.”
September 17, 2019
Storytelling
As a result, they were especially worried about burnout, and the possibility that storytelling about climate could tip so many people into despondency that the effort to avert a crisis would burn itself out. And
September 18, 2019
Politics of Consumption
But among the woke Left the inverted charge is just as often true: we navigate by a North Star of politics through our diets, our friendships, even our consumption of pop culture, but rarely make meaningful political noise about those causes that run against our own self-interest or sense of self as special—indeed enlightened. On perhaps no issue more than climate is that posture of enlightenment a defensive gesture: almost regardless of your politics or your consumption choices, the wealthier you are, the larger your carbon footprint.
September 19, 2019
[What if we’re...]
Instead we assign the task to future generations, to dreams of magical technologies, to remote politicians doing a kind of battle with profiteering delay. This is why this book is also studded so oppressively with “we,” however imperious it may seem. The fact that climate change is all-enveloping means it targets all of us, and that we must all share in the responsibility so we do not all share in the suffering—at least not all share in so suffocatingly much of it.
All Excerpts From
David Wallace-Wells. “Life After Warming.” Crown Publishing, 2019-04-16. Apple Books.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Enter David Wallace-Wells who states, dear reader, you want to know what climate change looks like, let me show you the horrors. If reading this book gave a facial experesssion it would be when the opened the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark where everyone's face melted off. Part of the planet is unlivable, millions dead, the inability to grow food, and more. It isn't something that will happen tomorrow, but it is on the horizon. There is a tipping point that is right in front of us. If you wanted ammunition to stop our Great Dithering, here is a good resource to use.
NOTES FROM
Life After Warming
David Wallace-Wells
September 13, 2019
[It is worse, much...]
because we were so sociopathically good at collating bad news into a sickening evolving sense of what constituted “normal,” and because we looked outside and things seemed still okay
September 14, 2019
Wildfire
The fact that warming is now hitting our wealthiest citizens is not just an opportunity for ugly bursts of liberal schadenfreude; it is also a sign of just how hard, and how indiscriminately, it is hitting. The wealthy used to build castles to defend themselves against the world; more recently it’s been a more modern kind of fortress—cities—enclosing more and more of us in an illusion of man-made security. All of a sudden, it’s getting a lot harder to protect against what’s coming.
September 15, 2019
Economic Collapse
to help buffer or offset the impacts, we have no New Deal revival waiting around the corner, no Marshall Plan ready. The global halving of economic resources would be permanent, and, because permanent, we would soon not even know it as deprivation, only as a brutally cruel normal against which we might measure tiny burps of decimal-point growth as the breath of a new prosperity. We have gotten used to setbacks on our erratic march along the arc of economic history, but we know them as setbacks, and expect elastic recoveries. What climate change has in store is not that kind of thing—not a Great Recession or a Great Depression but, in economic terms, a Great Dying.
September 15, 2019
Climate Conflict
For every half degree of warming, they say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. In climate science, nothing is simple, but the arithmetic is harrowing: a planet four degrees warmer would have perhaps twice as many wars as we do today. And possibly more.
September 15, 2019
Climate Conflict
In each case, climate is not the sole cause but the spark igniting a complex bundle of social kindling.
September 17, 2019
Storytelling
James Hansen, who first testified before Congress about global warming in 1988, has named the phenomenon “scientific reticence,” and in 2007 chastised his colleagues for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was. That tendency has metastasized over time, ironically as the news from research grew bleaker, so that for a long time each major publication would be attended by a cloud of commentary debating its precise calibration of perspective and tone—with many of those articles seen to lack an even balance between bad news and optimism, and labeled “fatalistic.” Some were derided as “climate porn.”
September 17, 2019
Storytelling
As a result, they were especially worried about burnout, and the possibility that storytelling about climate could tip so many people into despondency that the effort to avert a crisis would burn itself out. And
September 18, 2019
Politics of Consumption
But among the woke Left the inverted charge is just as often true: we navigate by a North Star of politics through our diets, our friendships, even our consumption of pop culture, but rarely make meaningful political noise about those causes that run against our own self-interest or sense of self as special—indeed enlightened. On perhaps no issue more than climate is that posture of enlightenment a defensive gesture: almost regardless of your politics or your consumption choices, the wealthier you are, the larger your carbon footprint.
September 19, 2019
[What if we’re...]
Instead we assign the task to future generations, to dreams of magical technologies, to remote politicians doing a kind of battle with profiteering delay. This is why this book is also studded so oppressively with “we,” however imperious it may seem. The fact that climate change is all-enveloping means it targets all of us, and that we must all share in the responsibility so we do not all share in the suffering—at least not all share in so suffocatingly much of it.
All Excerpts From
David Wallace-Wells. “Life After Warming.” Crown Publishing, 2019-04-16. Apple Books.
This material may be protected by copyright.
It’s a shame; I felt this was not remarkably executed. Full of waffle and over use of a thesaurus which detracts from its vital message.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced