The Uninhabitable Earth Themes

Throughout The Uninhabitable Earth, author David Wallace-Wells describes the “cascades,” or cascading effects of interconnected climate and weather systems, that “form a latticework of climate crisis” beneath which humans live. From floods to wildfires to pollution to disease, the consequences of global warming may seem distinct—but in reality, they are all interconnected, and as one crisis cascades into another, the face of the Earth will change forever. The book suggests that humanity…

Many people consider humanity to be distinct from the natural world and believe that climate change will only affect nature. This is one of the most destructive “fairy tales” about climate change around. Since the advent of industry, humanity has played a huge role in the destruction of the natural world and the warming of the planet. Humanity has seen this destruction as a necessary casualty in order for the human world to conquer the…

For the last several decades, academics and scientists have called the current geologic era the “Anthropocene” to reflect how humanity has conquered the Earth. But the belief that humans have conquered the planet is a fallacy: what we have done since industrialization is more akin to arming a violent “war machine” (metaphorically, the planet) with all the tools needed to assure its own destruction. In other words, the hotter and more toxic the…