The Uninhabitable Earth

A lucid and thorough description of our unprecedented crisis, and of the mechanisms of denial with which we seek to avoid its fullest recognition. Trigger warning: when scientists conclude that yesterday's worst-case scenario for global warming is probably unwarranted optimism, it's time to ask Scotty to beam you up. At least that was my reaction upon finishing Wallace-Wells' brilliant and unsparing analysis of a nightmare that is no longer a distant future but our chaotic, burning present. David Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will much graver than most people realize, and he's right. The Uninhabitable Earth is a timely and provocative work. If we don't want our grandchildren to curse us, we had better read this book. If there are people around to write history books in the future, they will look back at the @ExtinctionR protestors and think they were the sanest people of our time. Read The Uninhabitable Earth by @dwallacewells if you don't know why. * Johann Hari, Twitter * On [Alexandra] Ocasio-Cortez's office bookshelf, near a picture of her late father and a photo of her with a local Girl Scout troop, two books nestle together in uneasy union. One is the Federalist papers. The other is The Uninhabitable Earth. * Time magazine profile on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez * Yes, this book will scare you, but it will also prompt you to take action to ensure the damage we as humans have done to the planet is stopped. * Stylist, Your Guide to the Best Books of 2019 * Just finished The Uninhabitable Earth by @dwallacewells. Everyone, everywhere, should read it. Can't remember the last time a book had such an impact on me. * Twitter * The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending armageddon. Harrowing. -- Jonathan Franzen * The New Yorker * Most of us known the gist, if not the details, of the climate change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the information deeply felt. This is a profound book, which simultaneously makes me terrified and hopeful about the future, full of regret and new will. Yes, this book will scare you, but it will also prompt you to take action to ensure the damage we as humans have done to the planet is stopped. * Stylist, 'Your guide to 2019's best non-fiction books' * Exceptionally well researched and written. . . . This short, concise book pulls no punches. If you read just one work of non-fiction this year, it should probably be [this] . . . What this book forces you to face is more important than any other subject you could be informing yourself about. * The Evening Standard * In his gripping new book ... Wallace-Wells shocks us out of complacency' * Prospect * Well-written, captivating, occasionally wry and utterly petrifying * i News * I think everyone should probably right now read David Wallace-Wells's The Uninhabitable Earth, which tells the grim story with as much optimism as possible, and which gives all the facts. -- Daniel Swift * The Spectator, Books of the Year * A very accessible and compelling read . . . a much more nuanced and a much more hopeful vision than you might expect. * The Irish Times * A book that's by turns alarming, terrifying and just downright bleak . . . a sustained piece of informed polemic. * The Evening Standard * Wake up! Get educated - The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells is a great place to start. -- Paris Lees * Vogue * Everyone should stop what they're doing and read The Uninhabitable Earth by @dwallacewells. This is our future if we don't act now. -- Johann Hari * Twitter * Not since Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" 30 years ago have we been told what climate change will mean in such vivid terms. -- Fred Pearce * The Washington Post * Brilliant ... At the heart

David Wallace-Wells is deputy editor of New York magazine, where he also writes frequently about climate change and the near future of science and technology. In July 2017 he published a cover story surveying the landscape of worst-case scenarios for global warming that became an immediate sensation, reaching millions of readers on its first day and, in less than a week, becoming the most-read story the magazine had ever published -and sparking an unprecedented debate, ongoing still today among scientists and journalists, about just how we should be thinking, and talking, about the planetary threat from climate change.