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octavia_cade 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
by David Wallace-Wells
The first half of this was excellent - within the restrictions Wallace-Wells sets out for himself, anyway. He seems entirely uninterested about the effects of climate on nonhuman life, so long as those effects don't impact humanity in any way. That, frankly, shows a paucity of wonder and a level of self-interest that my biologist self finds extremely off-putting. It does not effect, however, the structure of that first half, which is clearly organised and referenced to within an inch of its life. The consequences of climate change on human society are profound, and are laid out here in an extremely convincing way. (At least, I hope it is convincing, but I tend to think this book's preaching to the converted when what's needed is to reach the insular mindsets of those that haven't yet grasped the magnitude of the challenge that awaits us.)
So, first half excellent. The second half wanders away a bit for me. The number of references nose-dives, as Wallace-Wells starts talking around climate change and how we perceive it in culture, and what to do about it, and it's all a bit woolly. Nicely written, of course, he can turn an excellent phrase, but with so much of the book focused on the near-apocalyptic worst case scenario, the best he can manage to conjure up for the rest is a sort of wavering if unexplained optimism that centres (in an endnote, of all places) around engagement, but doesn't give much indication of what this actually means, or how to go about it at scale. I mean yes, this book is itself an example of engagement, but such options are limited, and disinterest in the entirety of nonhuman life isn't going to help, I think. Wallace-Wells might be indifferent to videos of starving polar bears, for instance, but such are enormously useful tools in making people feel rather than think, and as a science communicator myself, I increasingly believe that the latter is useless without the former... and likely leads to those contemptible examples of elite and technological escapism that Wallace-Wells so illustrates.
So, first half excellent. The second half wanders away a bit for me. The number of references nose-dives, as Wallace-Wells starts talking around climate change and how we perceive it in culture, and what to do about it, and it's all a bit woolly. Nicely written, of course, he can turn an excellent phrase, but with so much of the book focused on the near-apocalyptic worst case scenario, the best he can manage to conjure up for the rest is a sort of wavering if unexplained optimism that centres (in an endnote, of all places) around engagement, but doesn't give much indication of what this actually means, or how to go about it at scale. I mean yes, this book is itself an example of engagement, but such options are limited, and disinterest in the entirety of nonhuman life isn't going to help, I think. Wallace-Wells might be indifferent to videos of starving polar bears, for instance, but such are enormously useful tools in making people feel rather than think, and as a science communicator myself, I increasingly believe that the latter is useless without the former... and likely leads to those contemptible examples of elite and technological escapism that Wallace-Wells so illustrates.