The Uninhabitable Earth
A Story of the Future
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:5th Sep '19
Should be back in stock very soon
**SUNDAY TIMES AND THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
'An epoch-defining book' Matt Haig
'If you read just one work of non-fiction this year, it should probably be this' David Sexton, Evening Standard
Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman
A Waterstones Paperback of the Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019
Longlisted for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
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.
In crystalline prose, Wallace-Wells provides a devastating overview of where we are in terms of climate crisis and ecological destruction, and what the future will hold if we keep on going down the same path. Urgently readable, this is an epoch-defining book. -- Matt Haig, 'The Book that Changed My Mind' * The Guardian *
'Clear, engaging and often dazzling' * The Telegraph *
'A masterly analysis' * Nature *
Relentless, angry journalism of the highest order. Read it and, for the lack of any more useful response, weep. . . .The article was a sensation and the book will be, too. -- Bryan Appleyard * The Sunday Times *
The most terrifying book I have ever read . . . a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet. * The New York Times *
This is what I'm reading now: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. It focuses on the range of realistic possibilities with climate change. It does not sugarcoat, and can be quite scary -- that's without primarily focusing on the worstcase scenario. When people ask 'What can I do? - Read! What we need right now, in this country, is for all of us to be better, including ourselves.
A must-read. It's not only the grandkids and the kids: it's you. And it's not only those in other countries: it's you. -- Margaret Atwood * Twitter *
I've not stopped talking about The Uninhabitable Earth since I opened the first page. And I want every single person on this planet to read it.
Riveting . . . Some readers will find Mr Wallace-Wells's outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too. * The Economist *
Skipping the scientific jargon and relaying the facts in urgent and elegant prose, the magazine editor crafts a stirring wake-up call to recognize how global warming will permanently alter every aspect of human life. -- Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 So Far * Time *
ISBN: 9780141988870
Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 18mm
Weight: 254g
336 pages