Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Uninhabitable Earth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cascades, Systems Crises, and Interconnectedness
Human Responsibility and the Natural World
Optimism and Action vs. Despair and Nihilism
The Effects of Climate Change on Humanity
Summary
Analysis
While 71 percent of the planet is covered in water, only about two percent of that water is fresh—and only one percent is readily accessible. And humans don’t just need water to drink—we need it for agriculture and industry. By 2030, experts expect that global water demand will outstrip supply by 40 percent. This crisis isn’t unfixable—it’s mostly due to political and bureaucratic missteps—but still as many as 2.1 billion people already lack access to safe, clean drinking water. Climate change threatens to worsen the water crisis around the globe. As glaciers melt, water resources shrink, and freshwater availability worldwide could decline by two-thirds. Five billion people could be affected by 2050.
By explaining how many people are already suffering from a dearth of freshwater access at just one degree of warming, the book shows that we as a global society aren’t at a great baseline when one considers the tragedies, disasters, and shortages to come. There is already a strain on safe drinking water all across the globe, from the world’s wealthiest countries to its poorest. As the effects of warming continue to impact—or in some cases destroy—our freshwater sources, it will also become more difficult to ensure that everyone has water.
Themes
As some lakes around the world evaporate, others will experience a boom in aquatic plant growth, which multiplies carbon emissions and furthers the water crisis. Underground aquifers promise to provide freshwater—but these resources are limited, and many of the world’s aquifers are already drained.
This passage shows that even when it comes to freshwater sources, every climate system and natural resource we have becomes weaponized by warming. The lakes we look to for water may dry up due to heat or become carbon sources themselves. No part of the world will remain unchanged by the ravages of warming.
Themes
In March 2018, Cape Town experienced an acute water crisis. The drought exaggerated existing social and political conflicts in the metropolis, but residents themselves weren’t really responsible for the crisis—personal consumption is certainly not the reason the world is in climate chaos. Only in the most of extreme droughts does personal use of water make a small bit of difference. Water issues affect four billion people each year—at just one degree of warming.
This passage illustrates how the side effects of warming patterns—such as water shortages—have reverberations throughout the social, political, and economic spheres of our society, especially in places where tensions along the lines of race and class are particularly fraught. Instances like this water crisis in Cape Town aren’t unprecedented—but how bad they will get and how profoundly they will change our society is a frightening prospect.
Themes
Though the planet currently has the resources to provide clean water to its entire population, there is no collective political will to make water accessible to all. Water demand is expected to increase 50 percent in the next several decades, even as climate change makes water scarcer. Throughout human history, armed conflicts stretching as far back as ancient Sumeria have been tied to water shortages—and as evidenced by the Syrian drought of 2006-2011, which helped bring about a civil war, modern humans will not be spared from the violence and uncertainty water scarcity creates.
This passage highlights how frustrating—and even fatal, in many cases—political and social inaction is. Right now, many people are suffering needlessly as they endure water shortages—but it doesn’t have to be this way. Unfortunately, this is a grim predictor of the many needless casualties of climate crisis still to come. Unless society around the globe can stop thinking in terms of profit, greed, and exceptionalism and start thinking in terms of global stewardship of the planet, these disparities will continue to widen as climate crisis seizes the world.
Themes
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