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A review by pezski
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells
5.0
In this truly terrifying book, Wallace-Wells outlines what is likely to happen to our planet and our societies if we don't get a grip on the climate crisis, and how slim are the possibilities that we will. In a readable, thorough and for the most part quite matter-of-fact approach, he outlines the effects we are already seeing and the probable outcomes. While he is often talking about what will happen with global temperature increases of 3-5C it he makes clear that this is almost inevitable unless we reverse CO2 emissions within the next decade. Early on he points out that nobody ever talks about anything beyond the end of this century, partly because even if we slow down the warming, reversing it will take centuries. It isn't a case of staying under a 2C increase on pre-industrial levels, it's trying to avoid getting there in the next 80 years.
Be quite clear, these are not outlandish predictions. The most we can do at this stage is mitigation, and adaptation to the changes.
As balance, the author does touch on more severe possibilities - climate changes of a level that could be literally apocalyptic instead of just horrendously difficult (while an increase of say 3C will kill many millions and make life immeasurably harder for the survivors, humanity will survive it) and some sketches of people who taken the nihilistic view that destruction is inevitable and withdrawn. Wallace-Wells does not end as [a:Naomi Klein|419|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494619590p2/419.jpg] might with a cautiously optimistic call to arms in his final chapter, but he still offers tenuous hope. In closing the afterword, he addresses how universal talk of we acting together can obscure divergent solutions and disagreements but also give us a direction of travel for the only way out of this:
"The solutions, when we dare to imagine them, are global as well, which makes universal language, I think, even if not precisely accurate, nevertheless fitting and illustrative and indeed motivating, if there is to be any chance of preserving even the hope for that happier future - relatively liveable, relatively fulfilling, relatively prosperous and perhaps, more than only relatively just. Call me crazy, or better yet naive, I still think we can."
I think he considers that a hopeful ending, couched as it is parenthetical clauses and that, too, is sobering.
Be quite clear, these are not outlandish predictions. The most we can do at this stage is mitigation, and adaptation to the changes.
As balance, the author does touch on more severe possibilities - climate changes of a level that could be literally apocalyptic instead of just horrendously difficult (while an increase of say 3C will kill many millions and make life immeasurably harder for the survivors, humanity will survive it) and some sketches of people who taken the nihilistic view that destruction is inevitable and withdrawn. Wallace-Wells does not end as [a:Naomi Klein|419|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494619590p2/419.jpg] might with a cautiously optimistic call to arms in his final chapter, but he still offers tenuous hope. In closing the afterword, he addresses how universal talk of we acting together can obscure divergent solutions and disagreements but also give us a direction of travel for the only way out of this:
"The solutions, when we dare to imagine them, are global as well, which makes universal language, I think, even if not precisely accurate, nevertheless fitting and illustrative and indeed motivating, if there is to be any chance of preserving even the hope for that happier future - relatively liveable, relatively fulfilling, relatively prosperous and perhaps, more than only relatively just. Call me crazy, or better yet naive, I still think we can."
I think he considers that a hopeful ending, couched as it is parenthetical clauses and that, too, is sobering.