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
Human beings have told stories about the end of the world for thousands of years—yet when faced with scientists’ calls for us to pay attention to the Earth’s warning signals, it is difficult for humanity to reckon with the reality of apocalypse. David Wallace-Wells calls this effect “climate’s kaleidoscope”—the condition of being “mesmerized” and transfixed by the threat of Armageddon without actually ever perceiving it clearly.
By introducing a new mechanism through which humanity tends to view the threat of warming, Wallace-Wells continues to explore one of the many threats to action and meaningful change in the fight against warming. It’s one thing to be told about the ravages that will soon seize the earth, and yet another to imagine them. But to really understand what they will look like—and how close they truly are—is a difficult task.
Themes
People love when books, movies, and other forms of entertainment deal with apocalypse—but these stories often reinforce the idea that humanity can survive or surmount the challenge of climate crisis with little preparation or effort. In reality, the world will look and feel much different at two or three degrees of warming, and humanity will no longer have the luxury of enjoying these narratives from afar: they will be unfolding, everywhere, right before our eyes. No one will feel insulated from (or curious about) the impacts of climate change in a world that’s ravaged by escalating degrees of warming.
Holding the unrelenting change and slow destruction of our one Earth at arm’s length is just another mode of inaction and indifference. By consuming narratives that are anthropocentric and, yet again, extol humanity’s ability to conquer anything, we are collectively deciding to do nothing until it’s too late. Our hopes of triumph are not enough—there needs to be real political and social action now, or there will be no possibility of pushing back warming’s ravages.
Themes
In reality, climate change is difficult to talk about because the narrative is hard to understand. There’s no real “evilness” in the story of climate change—humanity itself is the antagonist. In real climate narratives, there is only compounded complicity and shared responsibility in the global denial of what is happening to the Earth because of human greed.
The media we consume about the apocalypse has taught us to see climate change itself as the antagonist—when, in reality, humanity is its own worst enemy. Accepting and internalizing the true narrative of warming is a task too daunting—and in many cases, too painful—for much of humanity.
Themes
Humanity’s conceptions of nature, too, are in for a change. The stories we tell about the natural world are often structured like dioramas—enclosed, distanced, and set up so that viewers can learn something from them. But we will soon no longer have to study nature closely to see the effects of a warming planet—nor will there be any time left to learn from what nature is telling humanity as reefs die, storms surge, and droughts spread.
This passage underscores, yet again, that it’s convenient for humanity to think of the natural world as somehow separate, distant, or disconnected from our own. But the reality is that we live in and through nature—and as warming seizes hold of the planet and nature’s feedback systems struggle to sustain themselves, we won’t be able to ignore how greatly we depend on nature any longer. Nature is dependent upon us to do something to stop its destruction.
Themes
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Panic over plastic consumption and bee death are two other major climate “fables” that, it will soon be clear, say more about humanity’s desire to panic but remain inert than about our desire to actually preserve the earth. The idea that something will suddenly, swiftly wipe huge swaths of the Earth away—something beyond human control—is another way that humanity falls back on denial, inaction, and fatalism instead of turning to collective action and meaningful legislation.
By focusing on microplastics or colony collapse—the latter of which is a normal part of bees’ life cycles—humanity raises great panic over small, single-issue parts of the climate crisis. There are many cascades that are more pressing, many more sociopolitical side effects of warming more dangerous—and yet humanity, time and time again, chooses to compartmentalize and catastrophize microcosms of warming rather than looking at the phenomenon as a whole.
Themes
Sociologists and environmentalists refer to the current era as the “Anthropocene,” a term that suggests humans have so fully dominated the globe that weather, animal kingdoms, and plant life have all been transformed into things no longer truly “natural.” In fact, modern humanity hasn’t successfully “paved over” nature. Attempts to control what nature has in store by building seawalls, carbon-capture fields, and other climate-change repellants just underscore how impossible it is to remove nature from the picture. After all, Florida and Southern California, where people are making some of the most obvious attempts to control and reshape nature, will not endure by 2100. Humanity hasn’t defeated the environment at all—we have only given nature more ammunition, forcing it to spiral more quickly beyond control.
This passage underscores one of the most dangerous, destructive features of contemporary thinking. By naming our current era the Anthropocene and claiming our triumph over nature’s might, we have done ourselves a great disservice. Thinking of the natural world as conquerable means thinking of it as separate, as a liability. This perspective, the book posits, is what has led to a global climate of inaction and denial about the very real threats warming presents. In ignoring our duty to nature and centering ourselves, we have assured the destruction both of the natural world and the human one, proving we’ve really conquered nothing.
Themes
Even though scientists have known these facts for a long time, fears of being labeled “alarmist” have dogged their attempts to share their research. Media reporting on climate change has been called “climate porn.” Attempts to obscure the true threat of climate change have lulled humanity into inaction and denial, and even international conferences, treaties, and accords often seem like pure political theater: change isn’t happening fast enough, nor is it spreading far enough around the globe.
This passage is yet another in which the book underscore the thin line that leading scientists and climatologists must straddle as they struggle to share their message with the public. On the one hand, being “alarmist” discredits their painstaking models of what our future looks like. But on the other hand, treating climate change as anything other than the profound existential threat it is would be irresponsible and perhaps waste the precious time we still have to engineer solutions to our currently projected warming patterns.
Themes
What has come to be known as “scientific reticence,” however, does have its uses. Scientists know that learning too much too fast about climate disaster can lead to burnout, panic, or further denial and inaction. Scientists don’t just shoulder the burden of predicting what comes next—they must strike the careful balance between hope and fear needed to motivate change. For decades, as scientists presented data, no one listened: in 2018, with the IPCC report about the effects of two degrees of warming, scientists at last leaned toward fear. Yet still no one listened, and many were left wondering what would make the globe wake up.
Trying to decide whether hope or fear is a better motivator is a hidden, unseen part of work as a climatologist. Humanity is fragile, and we’ve been trained to think about climate change and apocalyptic, existential threats in a certain way: we want to see ourselves as invincible, moral conquerors. Shattering these paradigms is difficult, but it must be done if humanity is to recognize our collective responsibility to fighting climate change immediately.
Themes
