Wallace-Wells undertakes two tasks in this book. First, he brings us up to date with the latest climate science and the most reliable prognostications about the effects of climate change. The works of thousands of scientists converge around a variety of hellscapes that would make Dante swoon. As Wallace-Wells points out, we've been conditioned to think that climate change is just rising sea levels or some warmer temperatures here and there. It's not nearly so simple. It's not "I don't live near the coast, so what's my worry," because the problem is manifold and ubiquitous. No one can escape. Yes, sea levels will rise. Temperatures will rise so that some areas to become nearly unhabitable, especially around the Middle East and India (and having lived in northern India, I have a sense of what extreme temperatures feel like). Droughts and floods will increase in frequency and severity. Wildfires, as Americans have seen within the past year in California and the Pacific Northwest, will increase in severity and frequency. Severe weather events, such as hurricanes and tornados, will proliferate and become stronger. Get ready for the designation of a Category 6 hurricane. Established diseases will spread (malaria, dengue fever, and zika will move north), and new pathological organisms will evolve in our hothouse atmosphere. Crops will fail and yields decline. Nature will survive, of course, but species and whole ecosystems will disappear. We'll see Nature altered in ways that we don't recognize and won't enjoy. Human beings will be forced to migrate to survive. And conflicts will proliferate and intensify, from domestic quarrels (and undoubtedly physical abuse) to wars and civil unrest. We seem intent on creating a perfectly Hobbesian world of the war of all against all.
Is Wallace-Wells just another alarmist? Is this just a book with cheap thrills like a 50's horror flick? I wish. Wallace-Wells went into this research and writing project as someone who was cognizant of climate change, but who didn't hold it front and center of his concerns until, as a journalist, he saw an increasing flood of scientific papers that revealed a much more frightening future than most of the media was reporting. What Wallace-Wells discovered disturbed him and frightened him. But he hasn't given up hope, and neither should we.
In fact, the second portion of the book, after establishing the likelihood of various varieties of hell that we humans are creating for ourselves--and we are creating it, and we are choosing it--Wallace-Wells turns to our responses and how individuals, societies, and nations may respond to the increasing pressures that we face.
We humans, like most of our fellow creatures here on Earth, have three instinctive responses to threats: fight, flight, or freeze (even faint). I couldn't help but think along these lines as I read about reactions (or the lack of response) to our increasingly certain knowledge. As a whole, we've chosen to faint, to swoon at the thought of what we've wrought and then distract ourselves from our plight. We play mind games with ourselves to distract ourselves from the challenge at hand, and 21st-century consumer capitalism is most willing to enable us to do this. The Republican Party in Congress tries to pretend that the science is wrong and the problem unreal, 'another liberal plot" they say. Some say its just "God's will" and take a fatalistic approach justified on some bit of Bible misreading. Others seek to flee through technological panaceas, some of which may prove useful, but none of which promise reliable remedy and none of which can be attempted without immense costs and tremendous uncertainty about unintended consequences. The super-rich investigate how to govern the bunkers they're building to try to escape the wrath of the masses who will seek both vengeance and access to the resources that the super-rich have squirreled away. (But the super-rich remain worried about how to keep their guardians from turning on them.)
The last option is to fight (climate change, not my fellow humans), and that's the option I'll take. We'll suffer significant--if not devastating--dislocations. We'll continue to see all sorts of changes, natural, social, economic, political, and cultural. But as Wallace-Wells makes clear, we have options and the potential to dramatically reduce the suffering that the future holds for all humans if we don't take sufficient steps to alleviate our plight. And I believe--or at least I possess a ray of hope--that we humans can respond in time (and time is of the essence). Thomas Friedman recently quoted an elementary but valuable insight from economic thinker Eric Beinhoffer: "there are only two ways to cure political tribalism: 'A common threat or a common project.'” Friedman uses this point to recommend that we need to undertake a common project to repair the foundations of the middle class. I suggest that repairing the foundations of the middle class must be subsumed under the project of dealing with climate change, which is a common threat and can become a common project. Indeed, starting now, we must re-imagine our political structures, our political economy, our entire culture. We have the potential to use the impending catastrophes to attempt to build a more just society. We either seek a just and sustainable world, or we can expect increasing international strife and civil anarchy. The range of possibilities for political, economic, and cultural change is vast, from outcomes that will prove (reasonably) attractive to appalling possibilities for anarchy or totalitarianism (and every nightmare in between).
In listening to a couple of interviews of author David Wallace-Wells (The Ezra Klein Show & The Joe Rogen Experience), I was relieved to learn that he has an infant daughter, born while he was researching this topic. This fact reinforces his fundamental commitment to strive for the best possible outcome of our climate challenge, and it lets readers know that his hopeful words (there are some) don't represent publisher mandated pablum for readers. Wallace-Wells has to believe that we can take effective action to reduce our suffering and that of those who will come after us.
One final comment: Again, from interviews, suggestions have been made that millennials will face this problem and must live with the consequences. Of course, this is true. But we baby-boomers have overseen an almost obscene increase in carbon in the atmosphere in the period since Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006). We bear the burden of responsibility for addressing our planetary illness. Alleviating the devastation of climate change must be a cross-generational project. We must begin the think in Burkean terms: society is a contract among generations past, present, and future. (If only there were more true conservatives!)
Please, read this book and ponder your response. What shall we choose?
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