The uninhabitable earth

For more than 30 years, scientists have been ringing the alarm on anthropological climate change, a warning that has frankly gone unheeded. This book describes the culmination of 30 years of handwringing and dawdling from global politicians who have had it within their power to change the direction in which our planet is heading.

David Wallace-Wells does not mince words, as evidenced by his opening statement: ‘It is worse, much worse than you think.’ He starts by detailing the five most catastrophic mass extinction events, all of which were caused by climate change – the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs doesn’t even make the list. The worst of the top five, the End-Permian mass extinction of 252 million years ago, was caused by a warming of 10°C, and saw the death of 96% of all life on the planet. Today, we are struggling to limit anthropogenic warming to 3–4°C, with no real consensus on whether a cohesive plan of action will be agreed, let alone implemented, worldwide…