David Wallace-Wells paints a grim picture of human future in The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. He elucidates all the terrible forecasts and statistics in section one, “Cascades,” and in section two, “Elements of Chaos.” Rising oceans will drown the largest cities, two-thirds of which, are on the coast. Increasing temperatures will render the entire tropical zone of the planet uninhabitable, potentially creating heat that humans simply cannot survive in. Catastrophic drought, deadly food shortages, and millions of climate refugees surging north will create chaos, disorder and conflict for billions of future humans. The hot age will be defined not by a “new normal,” but by the absence of any normal. What once were considered “500 year” natural disasters will become annual occurrences. Forget standards of living, economic growth, or even enlightenment liberal values, survival will be the sole objective for most people. We are already seeing this world come into focus in our own time as the first waves of climate refugees, super storms, fires, and other troubling signs are battering the earth.
Section three, “The Climate Kaleidoscope,” contains some intriguing ruminations. Wallace-Wells takes on shibboleths, such as the idea that consumer choices are meaningful substitutes for political action, or that somehow technology – which, honestly, created this situation in the first place – will somehow come to the rescue and save us all. He notes that we, the living generation, have created much of the problem ourselves (for example, despite the increase in green energy, coal use has jumped 80% since 2000 due to our increased reliance on energy for electronic gadgets, air conditioning, and home appliances, among other things) and we can be the ones to mitigate its effects with adjustments and changes now. It’s not just the economic and political power structures that are stalling action, either. In seeing climate change as the foremost and most immediate threat, he argues that environmentalists get “distracted” in what seem to be side issues, like recycling (no tangible impact on global warming), plastic pollution (ditto), GMOs (might actually be necessary in the new hot world), nuclear power (it’s better than coal), green energy (its good, but is supplementing fossil fuel use, not supplanting it), and straws (again, no impact on warming). He argues that we will have to live in a world with a certain amount of pollution (at least it reflects sun light) and the resulting chronic health conditions that will come with that when the alternative increases temperatures. Wallace-Wells tackles a lot more in this section, such as the meaning of civilization, future of politics (most likely will see more authoritarian regimes and less democracy), and ethics. All of which are equally thought evoking.
Wallace-Wells posits that future civilization will likely live amidst the ruins of the past, like Europe in the post-Roman Empire, pining for the order and stability of the old world. But as that fades increasingly into the past, future humans could lose sight of even that and sink into a sort “Planet of the Apes” world (my analogy, not the author’s) where there is no memory at all of the past.
In light of recent culture war debacles over monuments, public memory, and the teaching of history, I wonder what future generations on a charred earth will think of us. Will they wonder why we could not get rid of our cars, multiple electronic devices, and carbon-fueled vacations? Will parched mouths ask why we never fixed our leaky pipes that waste astronomical amounts of fresh water? Will hungry people be outraged by our carbon-heavy diets and food industry that they could no longer able to sustain? As millions, if not billions, of people are displaced from coastal and tropical zones, will they ask in despair why we bothered to build cities in the desert, like Phoenix, or on the coast, like Florida, in the first place? Will they in short, look at us in the same contemptible and angry manner that we do when looking at slaveholders?
