The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.
David Wallace-Wells is deputy editor of New York magazine, where he also writes frequently about climate change and the near future of science and technology. In July 2017 he published a cover story surveying the landscape of worst-case scenarios for global warming that became an immediate sensation, reaching millions of readers on its first day and, in less than a week, becoming the most-read story the magazine had ever published -and sparking an unprecedented debate, ongoing still today among scientists and journalists, about just how we should be thinking, and talking, about the planetary threat from climate change.
In crystalline prose, Wallace-Wells provides a devastating overview
of where we are in terms of climate crisis and ecological
destruction, and what the future will hold if we keep on going down
the same path. Urgently readable, this is an epoch-defining
book.
*The Guardian*
'Clear, engaging and often dazzling'
*The Telegraph*
'A masterly analysis'
*Nature*
Relentless, angry journalism of the highest order. Read it and, for
the lack of any more useful response, weep. . . .The article was a
sensation and the book will be, too.
*The Sunday Times*
The most terrifying book I have ever read . . . a meticulously
documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes
that will soon engulf our warming planet.
*The New York Times*
This is what I'm reading now: The Uninhabitable Earth by David
Wallace-Wells. It focuses on the range of realistic possibilities
with climate change. It does not sugarcoat, and can be quite scary
-- that's without primarily focusing on the worstcase scenario.
When people ask 'What can I do? - Read! What we need right now, in
this country, is for all of us to be better, including
ourselves.
A must-read. It's not only the grandkids and the kids: it's you.
And it's not only those in other countries: it's you.
*Twitter*
I've not stopped talking about The Uninhabitable Earth since I
opened the first page. And I want every single person on this
planet to read it.
Riveting . . . Some readers will find Mr Wallace-Wells's outline of
possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be,
too.
*The Economist*
Skipping the scientific jargon and relaying the facts in urgent and
elegant prose, the magazine editor crafts a stirring wake-up call
to recognize how global warming will permanently alter every aspect
of human life.
*Time*
Wallace-Wells is an extremely adept storyteller, simultaneously
urgent and humane . . . [he] does a terrifyingly good job of moving
between the specific and the abstract.
*Slate*
Enough to induce an honest-to-God panic attack ... The margins of
my review copy of the book are scrawled with expressions of terror
and despair, declining in articulacy as the pages proceed, until
it's all just cartoon sad faces and swear words ... To read The
Uninhabitable Earth is to understand the collapse of the
distinction between alarmism and plain realism
*The Guardian*
There is much to learn from this book. From media and scientific
reports of the past decade, Wallace-Wells sifts key predictions and
conveys them in vivid prose.
*The Observer*
Brilliant ... At the heart of Wallace-Wells's book is a
remorseless, near-unbearable account of what we are doing to our
planet
*The New York Times*
Not since Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" 30 years ago have we
been told what climate change will mean in such vivid terms.
*The Washington Post*
Everyone should stop what they're doing and read The Uninhabitable
Earth by @dwallacewells. This is our future if we don't act
now.
*Twitter*
Wake up! Get educated - The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace
Wells is a great place to start.
*Vogue*
A book that's by turns alarming, terrifying and just downright
bleak . . . a sustained piece of informed polemic.
*The Evening Standard*
A very accessible and compelling read . . . a much more nuanced and
a much more hopeful vision than you might expect.
*The Irish Times*
I think everyone should probably right now read David
Wallace-Wells's The Uninhabitable Earth, which tells the grim story
with as much optimism as possible, and which gives all the
facts.
*The Spectator, Books of the Year*
Well-written, captivating, occasionally wry and utterly
petrifying
*i News*
In his gripping new book ... Wallace-Wells shocks us out of
complacency'
*Prospect*
If you read just one work of non-fiction this year, it should
probably be [this] . . . What this book forces you to face is more
important than any other subject you could be informing yourself
about.
*The Evening Standard*
Exceptionally well researched and written. . . . This short,
concise book pulls no punches.
Yes, this book will scare you, but it will also prompt you to take
action to ensure the damage we as humans have done to the planet is
stopped.
*Stylist, ‘Your guide to 2019’s best non-fiction books’*
Most of us known the gist, if not the details, of the climate
change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong
feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the
details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but
often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the
information deeply felt. This is a profound book, which
simultaneously makes me terrified and hopeful about the future,
full of regret and new will.
Harrowing.
*The New Yorker*
The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of
insanely lyrical prose about our pending armageddon.
Just finished The Uninhabitable Earth by @dwallacewells. Everyone,
everywhere, should read it. Can't remember the last time a book had
such an impact on me.
*Twitter*
Yes, this book will scare you, but it will also prompt you to take
action to ensure the damage we as humans have done to the planet is
stopped.
*Stylist, Your Guide to the Best Books of 2019*
On [Alexandra] Ocasio-Cortez's office bookshelf, near a picture of
her late father and a photo of her with a local Girl Scout troop,
two books nestle together in uneasy union. One is the Federalist
papers. The other is The Uninhabitable Earth.
*Time magazine profile on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez*
If there are people around to write history books in the future,
they will look back at the @ExtinctionR protestors and think they
were the sanest people of our time. Read The Uninhabitable Earth by
@dwallacewells if you don't know why.
*Johann Hari, Twitter*
If we don't want our grandchildren to curse us, we had better read
this book.
David Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will
much graver than most people realize, and he's right. The
Uninhabitable Earth is a timely and provocative work.
Trigger warning: when scientists conclude that yesterday's
worst-case scenario for global warming is probably unwarranted
optimism, it's time to ask Scotty to beam you up. At least that was
my reaction upon finishing Wallace-Wells' brilliant and unsparing
analysis of a nightmare that is no longer a distant future but our
chaotic, burning present.
A lucid and thorough description of our unprecedented crisis, and
of the mechanisms of denial with which we seek to avoid its fullest
recognition.
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