The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
Rating: 5.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2022-10-13
I tore through this book. It’s a nonstop torrent of information, all about the varied and intricate ways things are really going to fall apart if climate change progresses unabated. The first half is a detailed taxonomy of disasters. The second half is a series of musings on how climate change relates to the many aspects of human life and culture. The whole thing is an attempt to really wrap your mind around the gravity of the situation.
Climate change has a complex web of cascading interactions. Some of them are:
- higher temperatures -> heat stress, exhaustion, death
- heat + drought -> reduced crop yields
- higher co2 levels -> more plant growth with less dense nutrition
- melted glaciers + warmer oceans -> higher sea levels, more flooding
- heat + drought -> worse and more frequent fires
- fewer trees -> mudslides. released carbon
- warmer oceans -> worse storms
- co2 -> acidic oceans
- heat + pollution -> oxygen-free dead zones
- gulf stream stoped -> no circulation of temperature
- higher co2 -> cognitive decline
- drought -> dust in air
- heat -> ozone in air
- disrupted winds -> pollution accumulates
- wildfires -> particulate matter
- melting ice -> release of ancient dormant pathogens
- expanded tropical zone -> spread of tropical diseases from mosquitos
- more frequent disasters -> more money spent on recovery
- reduced agricultural yields -> reduced wealth
- extreme heat -> shutdown of infrastructure like trains, planes, power plants
- heat + pollution -> lower worker productivity
- scarcer resources -> more war
- hotter -> more violent crime
This book really frames the epic scale of the problem. Some quotes:
- “There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology - and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction”
- “quite literally the greatest story ever told”
- “We have all already left behind the narrow window of environmental conditions that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place, but not just evolve - that window has enclosed everything we remember as history, and value as progress, and study as politics. What will it mean to live outside that window?”
- “A civilization enclosing itself in a gaseous suicide, a running car in a sealed garage”