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lucywalker 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
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!