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
Contemporary Western thought often categorizes history as “a story that moves in one direction”—progress is inevitable, and there is no tragedy that humanity can’t conquer. But while humanity likes to conceive of history as having “right” and “wrong” sides, climate change is on its own side. Climate change won’t help anything grow or flourish—it will only move things backward.
This passage underscores a more niche effect of climate change on human life. Humanity has always conceived of itself as constantly moving forward, expanding, growing, and evolving—but now, we must begin to reckon with the fact that all of our progress has brought us to a peak from which we can only descend. This mass reframing of how we think about the arc of our history is just another way climate change threatens to destroy everything we know about ourselves.
Themes
Climate change will require humanity to reconsider its history and search for the truth. Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years, but agriculture—which is, no doubt, the largest single precursor to both capitalism and climate change—has only been around for 12,000. Some sociologists even call the Neolithic Revolution “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.”
For centuries—longer, even—humanity has celebrated its own advancements as unprecedented, life-giving, and decidedly positive. But climate change will soon force us to reconsider the actual impacts of each stage of our long, complicated evolution as a species. We may have to acknowledge the fact that all of our innovations have come at the cost of any real future progress. We have neglected our duty to the Earth’s preservation, and now we may not be able to survive long enough to continue on the path of constant innovation and revolution we’ve told ourselves is the story of our existence.
Themes
Modern humans are not as hardy or resourceful as their hunter-gatherer forefathers—for most of the 200,000-year history of humanity, the climate was stable and the planet was well-tended. This makes modern civilization seem like a “blip,” but it’s a blip that has nevertheless pushed the world and all its systems to the brink. Humanity’s story of its own success and triumph is now falling in on itself, exposing the collective myths that have propelled society forward until now.
This passage is complex in that it outlines a strange paradox at the heart of human civilization. Humanity’s history of industry and innovation has been impossibly short in terms of geological time—but so powerful in its destruction that it has, in just a few thousand years, forever changed the face of the planet. Realizing that unchecked growth and uncapped greed are not the goalposts of a healthy society is a painful process. But humanity will need to dispel these myths, and others still, if we are to survive the destruction we ourselves have wrought.
Themes
Pulling back the curtain on the true story of humanity doesn’t make any clearer what global society will do in the face of rapid warming—it is difficult to begin internalizing the belief that, as history marches forward, life will no longer improve. Other modes of thinking about history—seeing history as cyclical or eternally recurring—might offer a more accurate view of the human narrative. Many empires have fallen before now—Egypt, Rome, the Akkadian Empire—so it’s possible to imagine future generations of humanity living in the ruins of this one.
This passage suggests that humanity needs to come to terms sooner rather than later with the fact that our exponential growth and innovation may have already come to a halt. There may be no more prosperous time on Earth at any point in the future than the one we’re in right now—as our resources depleted and our planet warms, our human empire may well be on a sharply downward trajectory.
Themes
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Climate change has often been described as a “revenge of time,” and this view of history makes that descriptor even more apt. A “carceral model” of history, in which humanity will be forced to pay its debts and live with its mistakes, is perhaps the most accurate mode of thinking about the future. New cities and ancient ones alike will be flooded by sea-level rise or made unlivable by drought. The face of the planet will be altered forever, and the systems humanity has spent thousands of years developing will become irrelevant. Human civilization may well become an “afterthought” in the long lifespan of the planet.
Even though it’s dangerous to think that the Earth’s systems of warming are retributive in a moral sense, it is accurate to point out that climate change is indeed a feedback system. We’ve done certain things to survive and grow without thinking about the Earth, and now, in response, the Earth is doing things to survive without “thinking” about us. So the idea that human civilization may well become an aberration or an “afterthought” is plausible—but it will be because of our own arrogance and greed.
Themes
