The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

This is a must read book on climate change.

Reading this book honestly made me feel considerably more anxious about the state of our earth. However, he's right—the reality is that the situation is absolutely dire, and if we don't do anything about it soon then we're all f*cked.

I do have a couple of criticisms about the book: 1) I wish it was written in more straightforward language (yes the writing was beautiful but he could've said the same thing in less words), 2) some parts felt a little repetitive.

Overall, great book though. Honestly at this point everyone should be aware of the state we are in, and thus I'd highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.

This is a must read book on climate change.

Reading this book honestly made me feel considerably more anxious about the state of our earth. However, he's right—the reality is that the situation is absolutely dire, and if we don't do anything about it soon then we're all f*cked.

I do have a couple of criticisms about the book: 1) I wish it was written in more straightforward language (yes the writing was beautiful but he could've said the same thing in less words), 2) some parts felt a little repetitive.

Overall, great book though. Honestly at this point everyone should be aware of the state we are in, and thus I'd highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.

I didn't quite finish this before the audiobook zipped back to the library but I got close enough – and the reason I didn't finish before the due date is because this book is a slog. The author uses the phrase “which is to say” approximately a thousand times, is deeply enamored with adverbs, and writes in a dense and somewhat confusing way, vascillating between describing a catastrophic effect of climate change as a foregone conclusion and then writing something like “but actually, scientists don't know how this will play out and there are several things that might stop it.” (I mean, just admit that we don't know exactly what might happen up front?)

It's entirely possible that I had trouble engaging with this book because it's so very bleak. For the first couple hours I did feel weirdly empowered by getting a vision of what a heavily climate-change-affected world might look like – and hope because, in the introduction, the author notes that he decided to become a parent despite the bleak outlooks. Wallace-Wells does do a good job of describing scientific processes in laymen's terms (things like the Albedo effect and carbon capture). I do feel like I received a broad survey of the potential effects of climate change which I did not previously have appreciation for, though the sheer volume of information (and perhaps the audiobook format) made it difficult to hold onto the information. That said, the most concrete conclusion I got from this book was that we really have no damn clue what climate change will wreak upon us, except that it's probably going to be pretty damn bad. And that at this point, cutting emissions will not on its own be enough to change the course – that now, we do actually need to look at technology solutions in addition to drastic changes to our infrastructure and ways of life.

This book was really, really hard to read. Not because it discusses what might happen to our planet and our species in the face of unchecked climate change, which it does and which I think is a worthwhile endeavor, but because of the time it does spend discussing solutions (which seemed beyond its scope).

The book ascribes plenty of blame to our individual actions (the last plane ticket you purchased put meters of arctic ice into the ocean, did you know) but insists that anything any one of us does (including not having kids, opting for a hermetic existence, and even self-immolating) is ineffectual and even silly in the face of inevitable catastrophe. It's not wholly fatalistic (the author seems to think that at least his hypothetical grandchildren will be okay if we “just” demolish capitalism and nation-states in the next few years) but still somehow entirely unhopeful and castigating. This may well be intentional (the author rails a lot against complacency) but I'm less useful, not more, when my anxiety is inflamed.

Overall I learned a lot about climate change, but it was not an exercise that was good for my mental health and it planted a lot of “weeds” in my headspace that, even if true, I don't appreciate (there's no point in saving for retirement, voting for greener political candidates is pointless, it's futile to try and make the world better). I am relieved to finally be finished with it.

I made it to roughly page 50 before the urge to give up overpowered anything else. This is a shockingly bad book, especially given how necessary its warnings are. Every sentence is unnecessarily convoluted; every paragraph is more disjointed and baffling than the next. It's virtually impossible to learn anything because wading through the prose and the useless asides takes so much effort. This is a total waste. Put it aside and wait until someone else writes the book this should have been.

It is worse, much worse, thank you think.

That's how the book begins. It paints a much bleaker picture than How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates which I read before this one. It includes a lot of current scenarios and best-and-worst future prediction. All of which are very scary. It's as scary as any of the dystopian science fiction post-apocalyptic novel you'd ever read. The scariest part is that I don't think that's an alarmist view, but a realistic one. And it seems like not nearly enough people are aware or taking action.

The near future sketched in the first half of The Uninhabitable Earth is one of a planet tortured by epic wildfires, rising sea levels, megadroughts, famines, acidifying oceans, polluted air, and rising temperatures amidst which hundreds of millions of climate refugees wander a planet in the throes of collapsing economies and emerging conflicts. In short, Wallace-Wells would like you to know that, unless urgent action is undertaken to combat climate change, we are all royally fucked.

We've doubled the amount of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere in just the last 25 years. I'm like. I've remembered that entire time. I'm 33. The last 25 years is all me. That's all us. This wasn't something that just accumulated slowly since beginning of the industrial revolution.

While David Wallace-Wells occasionally comes across as a kind of deranged preacher of the apocalypse in his novel, “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming”, the facts, forecasts, and ideas he presents are unnervingly not far from reality. It is a philosophical book as much as an informational and speculative one. Wallace-Wells presents refreshingly humble thoughts on controversial topics, such as who should be held accountable for the impending environment destruction we face, whether or not having kids is ethical, and our role as individuals and a collective society in the age of climate change.

Although one has to assume the facts presented in the book are a certain degree under- or over-exaggerated, Wallace-Walls does an incredible job painting a realistic canvas of not what will but what could happen in the coming decades if we do or do not sufficiently address climate change. Positive feedback loops, food and water shortages, civil unrest, sea level rise, more frequent natural disasters, and biodiversity loss among other topics are discussed in detail. If you'd like to read a thought-provoking book that covers all aspects of climate change, this is the one.

Essential reading these days.

It's so easy to read this account of our futures to come from the safe perspective of the upper Northern hemisphere. We are not the ones that are-already/will-be hit first, it's the countries in the warmer and poorer regions who are the least to blame. Life's unfair.

I blame David Wallace-Wells smooth podcast voice and narration style to occasionally slipping in and out of listening with full attention. Probably a book I'll purchase to peruse again.

If you're looking for good news, or for a concrete way to get us out of this climate change crisis we find ourselves in, this book is not that. Yes, it does outline what needs to be done to fix the problem, but it also acknowledges that we are far too late to fix it all. We have f**ked up, and now we have to pay for the damage we have done. According to Mr. Wallace-Wells, that damage is extensive, and the consequences are dire; if anything, reading this will scare you about the future, but in a way that still holds out a very slim glimmer of hope. It's hopeful in its direness, and it the stark honesty of the miserable reality that awaits us feels almost galvanizing. The Uninhabitable Earth reminds us that yes, we've really screwed up, but if we want to save what we can, it's time for us to get to work.