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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
I wish this book was compulsory reading for everyone on earth but specially politicians.
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Highly highly recommended. The perfect book for someone wanting to know more about Climate Change than what is shown in popular media. In addition to the threats caused directly by warming, this book also explains what warming will do to the existing problems. This book is a call to action because not one of us will be saved from the processes we have set in motion.
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A very informative read full of detailed examples of the current effects of climate change whilst exploring the potential consequences of our inaction. I would recommend this book to anyone, to those already concerned about the climate and especially to those who seem somewhat uninterested in the topic; it is imperative we all learn and I believe this book was very educational. However, it sometimes felt like the author was simply listing catastrophes in long sentences with little punctuation making reading somewhat confusing.
informative
fast-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Really interesting and extremely concerning. Was a lot of dense information tho, so kinda hard to get through. Still a great book!
The Uninhabitable Earth is a very important book, and I agree with what it's trying to do, but I also had a lot of issues with its execution. David Wallace-Wells is trying to convey the totality of how bad global warming and climate change has the potential (and is in fact, almost certain) to be. More than hotter summers and rising sea levels. More than just stronger hurricanes. Wallace-Wells makes the argument that climate change will affect all aspects of our lives (and those of our descendants) for the worse. You will not be able to escape its effects just by moving inland. You will not be able to escape its effects by being rich. He wants to make it crystal clear to you that we are all fucked. However, how fucked we are depends greatly on the choices that we, collectively, make in trying to reduce and mitigate climate change, and while it's going to be bad no matter what, he argues, we can prevent it from being worse. It's not a binary choice between keeping global warming to 2°C or going above. Going to 2°C is better than going to 2.5°C, which is better than going to 3°C, and so on. It's a sliding scale of terrible outcomes.
He breaks all this down in a series of about 12 or so short chapters, each explicating a different effect of climate change along with estimates for how bad the problem is likely to worsen under different amounts of warming and often, how the problem varies by geographic region. These chapters, while horrifying and scary, are mercifully brief and generally clearly written, albeit with sometimes a mind-numbing array of statistics.
Much less effective is the second half of the book, which features 6 longer essays that examine how human society may react and change under these conditions. Wordy and rambling, using poorly or not-at-all defined terminology that many readers may not be familiar with, these essays feel like they were written for a different audience entirely. Particularly poorly written is the chapter on political changes with its confusing description of topics from the (heavily academic) tome, "Climate Leviathan" and neoliberalism (which the author never defines). If you are already familiar with political science, then this section may make more sense to you than it did to me.
All-in-all, this book is an unpleasant, depressing, unsettling read (and it is meant to be), that reminds you of how all-encompassing a problem climate change is.
He breaks all this down in a series of about 12 or so short chapters, each explicating a different effect of climate change along with estimates for how bad the problem is likely to worsen under different amounts of warming and often, how the problem varies by geographic region. These chapters, while horrifying and scary, are mercifully brief and generally clearly written, albeit with sometimes a mind-numbing array of statistics.
Much less effective is the second half of the book, which features 6 longer essays that examine how human society may react and change under these conditions. Wordy and rambling, using poorly or not-at-all defined terminology that many readers may not be familiar with, these essays feel like they were written for a different audience entirely. Particularly poorly written is the chapter on political changes with its confusing description of topics from the (heavily academic) tome, "Climate Leviathan" and neoliberalism (which the author never defines). If you are already familiar with political science, then this section may make more sense to you than it did to me.
All-in-all, this book is an unpleasant, depressing, unsettling read (and it is meant to be), that reminds you of how all-encompassing a problem climate change is.
challenging
dark
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
One of the more well written climate books I've read. I guess I was just pissed off by Radical Simplicity. Primarily alarmist, no mention of solutions really. But a good read, good call to action.
Overall I have to say this was really disappointing. The first half of the book was strong, and the last half he pretty much lost the plot. It is fitting that his last line tells the reader to call him naïve because that's exactly the word I was thinking of.
I'm tired of books acknowledging the injustices and inequalities inherent in how climate change is playing out, but then glossing over individual vs. corporate power in how we address those issues. For example, Wallace-Wells claims that we can't identify the oil and gas industry as a villain in the story of climate change as much as we'd like to, even though their climate denialism efforts are surely "evil," (his word). The oil and gas industry, after all, is ONLY (AGAIN HIS WORD) only responsible for 40% of all emissions. Wow, what a statement. A single industry responsible for 40% of the world's emissions can't be identified as a villain? Interesting. And he uses this to point to our individual contributions to climate change-again, negligible compared to the emissions of the industries of the world-and how we need to VOTE to change it. I didn't realize it was as simple as voting! Even though, for example, some 70% of Americans support legalization of marijuana but that hasn't been reflected in the policies of the people elected. It isn't as simple as voting and it is naïve to think otherwise. What power do we have individually against the might, the money, the power of these industries with a vested interest in ensuring that they continue to profit at the expense of the earth's climate?
Wallace-Wells also dedicates approximately two pages of the book to the potential of nuclear power to help us. I would urge him, and anyone, to read Crisis of Conscience by Tom Mueller to understand just how misplaced any reliance on the nuclear industry would be. Wallace-Wells states that the daily and annual impacts of air pollution are worse at any given time compared to the impacts after nuclear disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. To which I would respond: those are simply not the worst nuclear disasters that could occur. The Department of Energy in the United States is so corrupt and so weak, that the nuclear industry in the United States is practically self-regulating, to the detriment of the health of potentially millions of Americans. Indeed, if a meltdown were to occur in the Western United States, as Mueller explains is likelier and likelier to occur as time passes, it would be far worse than any nuclear disaster we have experienced so far in the history of nuclear power. So I'm also pretty tired of books and politicians relying on nuclear power to help us out on the climate front without at least acknowledging fully the potential dangers inherent in that.
I appreciated the first half of this book, and it was well-written, but for me, the second half was a disappointment.
I'm tired of books acknowledging the injustices and inequalities inherent in how climate change is playing out, but then glossing over individual vs. corporate power in how we address those issues. For example, Wallace-Wells claims that we can't identify the oil and gas industry as a villain in the story of climate change as much as we'd like to, even though their climate denialism efforts are surely "evil," (his word). The oil and gas industry, after all, is ONLY (AGAIN HIS WORD) only responsible for 40% of all emissions. Wow, what a statement. A single industry responsible for 40% of the world's emissions can't be identified as a villain? Interesting. And he uses this to point to our individual contributions to climate change-again, negligible compared to the emissions of the industries of the world-and how we need to VOTE to change it. I didn't realize it was as simple as voting! Even though, for example, some 70% of Americans support legalization of marijuana but that hasn't been reflected in the policies of the people elected. It isn't as simple as voting and it is naïve to think otherwise. What power do we have individually against the might, the money, the power of these industries with a vested interest in ensuring that they continue to profit at the expense of the earth's climate?
Wallace-Wells also dedicates approximately two pages of the book to the potential of nuclear power to help us. I would urge him, and anyone, to read Crisis of Conscience by Tom Mueller to understand just how misplaced any reliance on the nuclear industry would be. Wallace-Wells states that the daily and annual impacts of air pollution are worse at any given time compared to the impacts after nuclear disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. To which I would respond: those are simply not the worst nuclear disasters that could occur. The Department of Energy in the United States is so corrupt and so weak, that the nuclear industry in the United States is practically self-regulating, to the detriment of the health of potentially millions of Americans. Indeed, if a meltdown were to occur in the Western United States, as Mueller explains is likelier and likelier to occur as time passes, it would be far worse than any nuclear disaster we have experienced so far in the history of nuclear power. So I'm also pretty tired of books and politicians relying on nuclear power to help us out on the climate front without at least acknowledging fully the potential dangers inherent in that.
I appreciated the first half of this book, and it was well-written, but for me, the second half was a disappointment.