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carlosmartinez 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
'The Uninhabitable Earth' is a hugely important book, outlining the major issues related to climate change and urging an immediate, globally-coordinated and comprehensive response. As an introduction to the problems currently faced by (and caused by) humanity, it is essential reading; urgent and well written (albeit with a curious overuse of the words 'quotidian' and 'sanguine').
The second half of the book is devoted to a set of essays about ethics and philosophy in relation to how the world can tackle climate change. These are speculative and at times rather obscure, and in my view let the book down somewhat. The first half of the book is must-read; the second half is pretty skimmable.
The take-away lesson is: anthropogenic climate change threatens the existence of humanity. If emissions continue along their present trajectory, we'll see an average temperature increase of several degrees celsius that will render huge parts of the planet uninhabitable, leading to wars, resource scarcity and mass migration on an unprecedented scale. It's not too late to prevent this outcome, but we have to start now, and it's not going to be achieved by individual virtue-signalling actions but by global coordination and political leadership. Whether we can managed this is up to us.
The second half of the book is devoted to a set of essays about ethics and philosophy in relation to how the world can tackle climate change. These are speculative and at times rather obscure, and in my view let the book down somewhat. The first half of the book is must-read; the second half is pretty skimmable.
The take-away lesson is: anthropogenic climate change threatens the existence of humanity. If emissions continue along their present trajectory, we'll see an average temperature increase of several degrees celsius that will render huge parts of the planet uninhabitable, leading to wars, resource scarcity and mass migration on an unprecedented scale. It's not too late to prevent this outcome, but we have to start now, and it's not going to be achieved by individual virtue-signalling actions but by global coordination and political leadership. Whether we can managed this is up to us.