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scrimjm 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
This book is different from others on climate change in that primarily centers around the question, “how much worse will it get?” But he considers the natural science settled— it is the social science, or the actions humans will yet take, that are unknown. He contemplates the story of climate change: what will humans do, if anything, how we will continue to internalize this crisis in the coming decades, and how will society change because of it.
Some interesting things David discusses are: the balance between hope and fear in rhetorical approaches to climate change without too deeply tempering alarm to sidestep denialist outrage; how humans’ cognitive frameworks don’t really allow for good ways of grappling with our own demise (cognitive dissonance and overconfidence in technocratic solutions); our elevation of certain narratives over others, like our proclivity to center tales of animal suffering rather than reckon with our own eminent suffering; emerging conceptions of climate liability, in the form of equal protection lawsuits against nations and corporations, which he predicts will be become more common; how the choice of procreation has always been a political tool for privileged classes; notions of purity and individual choice as a proffered strategy of neoliberalism; how despair, purposelessness, etc. will manifest in the human psyche and shape our morality and politics moving forward (e.g. fringe movements like eco-facism); and the likelihood of adaption and mitigation efforts.
Though it outlines the absolute devastation what could be ahead, for me, it ultimately reinforced that (1) nihilism does us no good—even the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming would spare hundreds of millions of people’s lives. Ignorance or naive optimism about our responsibility for the climate (and those marginalized folks globally who are disparately impacted) aren’t useful either, but fatalism is equally bad. And, (2) the fact that climate change is anthropogenic should be actually be empowering rather than a source of hotly contested debate. Isn’t is better to know that we are the cause rather than an uncontrollable natural or supernatural force dooming us all? We have all the tools necessary to take action now, if we can mobilize globally.
Some interesting things David discusses are: the balance between hope and fear in rhetorical approaches to climate change without too deeply tempering alarm to sidestep denialist outrage; how humans’ cognitive frameworks don’t really allow for good ways of grappling with our own demise (cognitive dissonance and overconfidence in technocratic solutions); our elevation of certain narratives over others, like our proclivity to center tales of animal suffering rather than reckon with our own eminent suffering; emerging conceptions of climate liability, in the form of equal protection lawsuits against nations and corporations, which he predicts will be become more common; how the choice of procreation has always been a political tool for privileged classes; notions of purity and individual choice as a proffered strategy of neoliberalism; how despair, purposelessness, etc. will manifest in the human psyche and shape our morality and politics moving forward (e.g. fringe movements like eco-facism); and the likelihood of adaption and mitigation efforts.
Though it outlines the absolute devastation what could be ahead, for me, it ultimately reinforced that (1) nihilism does us no good—even the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming would spare hundreds of millions of people’s lives. Ignorance or naive optimism about our responsibility for the climate (and those marginalized folks globally who are disparately impacted) aren’t useful either, but fatalism is equally bad. And, (2) the fact that climate change is anthropogenic should be actually be empowering rather than a source of hotly contested debate. Isn’t is better to know that we are the cause rather than an uncontrollable natural or supernatural force dooming us all? We have all the tools necessary to take action now, if we can mobilize globally.