In The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019)

In The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019), science journalist David
Wallace-Wells uses the latest scientific research to construct a portrait of how climate
change will affect life on earth, and what humanity can do to mitigate it.

For decades, climate change has been treated as a theoretical but distant problem,
something that will only affect future generations. However, global warming's impact is
already evident in a myriad of ways, from the increasing number of record-breaking natural
disasters to the large number of refugees seeking asylum from resource-strapped regions.
The earth's citizens can no longer afford to ignore the threat climate change poses. If
humanity wants to survive, then the earth's inhabitants will have to gain an unprecedented
capacity for global collaboration.

Media reports on global warming tend to focus on the effects that climate change will have
on sea levels; due to the melting of arctic ice, entire cities are expected to eventually sink
into the oceans. However, climate change encompasses far more than rising sea levels and
disappearing coastlines. The increasingly warm climate will create a number of disastrous
problems: frequent famines and droughts, food scarcity, poor air quality, and a new normal of
dangerous and constant natural disasters. Climate change will also create a number of
refugees, both within and outside the United States, who flee their region as their homes are
destroyed by floods or forest fires. Those refugees, in turn, will stoke existing bigotries
among a region's original inhabitants, creating an environment ripe for fascism and
xenophobia. The changing climate affects every aspect of existence from the prospect of
future economic growth to the presence of microplastics in seafood. Mental health also
deteriorates when a community is forced to endure the calamities brought on by climate
change. Each degree of warming will amplify the severity of climate change's effects; the
longer humanity waits to tackle the crisis, the more money, skill, and time it will take to
address.

Some of the world's governments have previously given lip service to the idea that climate
change needs to be addressed. During the announcement of the 2016 Paris Agreement, a
number of nations promised that they would reduce their emissions in hopes of keeping the
average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above where it was
during the pre-industrialization age. The first world nations responsible for the majority of the
carbon increases, however, have not taken responsibility for their outsized role in the crisis.
What's more, instead of slowing down, the amount of emissions produced by these countries
has been steadily increasing.
If the world does not curb its emissions, it's possible that the planet's temperatures will reach
4 degrees Celsius or beyond. That earth would be a hellish one to live in: a world with large
regions in Africa, Australia, and the United States rendered completely uninhabitable. Death
from overheating will become far more likely, and flooding will become a constant problem
for those living in locations destined to join the ocean floor. Human life will not be wiped out
at 4 degrees Celsius, but the species will suffer tremendously, with many dying from hunger,
drought, disease, or even the polluted air.

Unfortunately, it's too late to prevent some of the devastating consequences of global
warming. The greenhouse effect, aided by humanity's tendency toward complacency, has
ensured that the earth likely will reach at least 2 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial age
temperature levels before the end of the century. Even if all carbon emissions were halted
immediately, the earth would likely still rise to that temperature. However, humanity still has a
responsibility to limit the severity of the crisis in whatever way it can. By working to directly
address climate change, people can ensure that their children and grandchildren inherit a
livable earth, even if that world can never return to its pre-industrialization state.

Key Insight 1

Most of the carbon responsible for global warming has been emitted in the past
century.

It's tempting to believe that the carbon and pollution contributing to climate change
accumulated over multiple decades or centuries. However, more than half of the carbon
contributing to the crisis has been emitted since the late 1980s. Almost all of it was emitted
after the start of World War II. Climate change is a condition that humanity has introduced in
a single lifetime, and humanity may have only one lifetime to prevent its permanent
destruction.

The United States is no longer one of the top carbon emitters on earth, but its cumulative
carbon footprint since 1750 is larger than that of any other industrialized nation. Since the
eighteenth century, the US has emitted nearly 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide, more than
China and India have contributed during that same time period combined. The amount of
CO2 emitted in the US grew substantially during the 1910s, when the country first passed
the United Kingdom as the top cumulative contributor of carbon emissions. Before that, the
UK was the top contender for that title because of the carbon emissions it created during the
expansion of its empire. The status of the US as the top cumulative contributor indicates that
a nation's wealth, not its population, primarily contributes to its carbon emissions. If
population had been the primary factor determining emission rates, then China or India
would have replaced the US in the top slot, just as the US did for Great Britain.