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The Uninhabitable Earth

A Story of the Future

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The Uninhabitable Earth

By: David Wallace-Wells
Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

It is worse, much worse, than you think.

The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.

Over the past decades, the term 'Anthropocene' has climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live - the planet no longer nurturing a dream of abundance but a living nightmare.

Written and read by David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth is a powerful examination of the world we find ourselves in.

©2019 David Wallace-Wells (P)2019 Penguin Audio 21st Century Environment Future Studies Modern Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Political Science Politics & Government Science Social Sciences Natural Disaster Scary War Socialism Africa

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All stars
Most relevant
This is hard to read - not because of his style but because it’s so terrifying. Wallace-Wells spells out the true impact of climate change on the world - food, access to water, economy, war, refugees- all within the foreseeable future. Should be read by all politicians

A true horror story

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Although I enjoyed the authors voice, I really struggled to follow his actual writing. It seemed to flit from one subject to another, didn’t seem to flow and I was quite disappointed by it.

So difficult to follow

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An intetesting and terrifying look at climate change and the implications for humanity. Not an easy or enjoyable listen but worthwhile.

A wake-up call

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You will need to hang in there as Wallace Wells deftly and thoughtfully sets out the great challenge we face. It is all the better for being read by the author – you can tell that he has struggled through this, as anyone must if they live on Earth. Particularly useful are the later chapters which map out existing and likely human reactions to our predicament.
Good luck everybody!

Superb

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Not gonna lie, at one point near the end the author actually congratulates you on even “getting this far” in the book. It’s not the kind of book that’s going to make you a whole bundle of laughs at a party, but as a companion piece to Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” (this is the book he cites as having sewed the seed of the idea) - we do kind of owe it to the future of humanity to at least try to sit up & pay attention.

Unrelentingly alarming, pretty depressing - but indubitably well researched & argued. You know deep down you should read it. Pack some Xanax...

Considerably more alarming than you’re even expecting

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