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will_farrell 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
Disappointing. Wallace-Wells distills the scientific literature on the future of our planet with unabated warming nicely in the first half of the book. But it’s difficult to grasp what the direction is - a scientific review of the worst-case scenario in the next 400 years or a failed attempt at distilling the near-term severe climate risks faced? There are also inaccuracies - the author claims plastic pollution is not a global warming issue, which is a naive assumption when the damage plastic pollution causes to our biodiversity, particularly our oceanic carbon sinks, massively reduces the autostabilising capacity of our natural capital to counteract carbon emissions. Plastic pollution is very much now a climate risk too.
On the political failures in the climate debate, Wallace-Wells produces some helpful, albeit surface-level, analysis of the shortcomings of existing approaches to climate change. But he fails to provide any serious analysis of the route to a sustainable future - something the latter half of the book appears to be trying to get at. Instead, Wallace-Wells falls into the trap of blaming “systems”, “competitive cultures”, and capitalism. The real situation is more nuanced and the author makes no attempt to identify progress or provide his own remedies. He doesn’t even explain what he means by the climate issues of capitalism and why he believes centrist and centre-right politicians won’t succeed in climate action under this framework. Plenty of economic literature and real data disagree with him on this, so it is disappointing to see no note of this, despite UK and other countries’ successful efforts to kickstart ambitious decarbonisation under pro-market governments. The author discusses far-left literature, but again seems to discard this without any analysis of any alternatives. The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader unimpressed with the lack of direction the book had.
Yes, it is a scary read in places, which is good for climate awareness and for building political will on climate action. But it offers nothing of note to the debate, in fact degrading successful efforts.
On the political failures in the climate debate, Wallace-Wells produces some helpful, albeit surface-level, analysis of the shortcomings of existing approaches to climate change. But he fails to provide any serious analysis of the route to a sustainable future - something the latter half of the book appears to be trying to get at. Instead, Wallace-Wells falls into the trap of blaming “systems”, “competitive cultures”, and capitalism. The real situation is more nuanced and the author makes no attempt to identify progress or provide his own remedies. He doesn’t even explain what he means by the climate issues of capitalism and why he believes centrist and centre-right politicians won’t succeed in climate action under this framework. Plenty of economic literature and real data disagree with him on this, so it is disappointing to see no note of this, despite UK and other countries’ successful efforts to kickstart ambitious decarbonisation under pro-market governments. The author discusses far-left literature, but again seems to discard this without any analysis of any alternatives. The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader unimpressed with the lack of direction the book had.
Yes, it is a scary read in places, which is good for climate awareness and for building political will on climate action. But it offers nothing of note to the debate, in fact degrading successful efforts.