53 pages • 1 hour read
David Wallace-WellsThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 8-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Elements of Chaos”
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Dying Oceans”
According to Wallace-Wells, a fourth of the carbon emitted by humans is absorbed by the world’s oceans, leading to a phenomenon known as ocean acidification. This process has a dramatic impact on populations of phytoplankton, which make up the base of countless aquatic food chains. Ocean acidification also threatens coral reefs, which are home to sea life that provides a half a billion people with food and income.
Another troubling phenomenon is ocean anoxification, by which large swaths of ocean water lose oxygen completely, making these dead zones incapable of supporting life. In the past 50 years, the author writes, the amount of anoxified water has increased fourfold. In a worrying observation, the author points out that “dramatic declines in ocean oxygen have played a role in many of the planet’s worst mass extinctions” (97).
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Unbreathable Air”
As climate change continues, the air will not only become warmer; it will also become dirtier and deadlier. Some of these impacts will be direct, like when droughts produce a harmful phenomenon known as dust exposure. Others are indirect; in 2013, for example, Arctic ice-melt disrupted natural wind-ventilation patterns in China, worsening smog, which that year caused the deaths of 1.37 million people.
Already, over 10,000 people die every day from complications related to air pollution, a number the author points out is more than the total number of people who have been affected by nuclear core meltdowns. Air pollution affects humans in countless other ways, being linked in some studies to memory loss, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders.
Curiously, aerosol pollution—particulate pollution suspended in the atmosphere—tends to suppress global temperatures by reflecting sunlight. This observation has led some scientists to propose a dangerous solution to global warming: Pump the atmosphere with massive amounts of aerosol pollution, specifically sulfur dioxide. This is one of many tactics included under the banner known as geoengineering, or remaking the planet’s climate. While doing so may buy the planet some time to slow global warming, Wallace-Wells concludes that such a plan would also cause millions more to die of air pollution each year, a trade-off he refuses to accept. Even worse, the gambit could never be halted without risking a rapid and devastating spike in global temperatures.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “Plagues of Warming”
Another major fear associated with climate change is that melting ice and permafrost will release long-trapped infectious microbes. Several of these ancient microbes have been successfully revived in laboratories, including a 3.5-million-year-old bacteria strain that a Russian scientist self-injected just to see if it made him sick. It did not. There are also strong indications that smallpox and the bubonic plague are lying dormant in Siberia, though scientists believe few of these microbes would survive the thawing process. There is also the case of a Russian boy who died after being exposed to anthrax released when a frozen reindeer carcass thawed out of the Siberian permafrost.
What scares epidemiologists even more than reanimated ancient spores, however, is the way climate change may affect the spread and even the evolution of existing diseases. As the tropics expand at an estimated rate of 30 miles per decade, so, too, do the domains of mosquitoes carrying infectious diseases like yellow fever and malaria. Already in Brazil, yellow fever has spread from the Amazon rainforest to the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, making mosquito-borne illness as much a threat in the shantytowns as in the jungle. As for malaria, the World Bank predicts that by 2030, 100 million more people will be at risk of contracting the disease as a result of climate change.
Perhaps most frightening of all is the case of the saiga, a species of antelope native to Central Asia. In 2015, 200,000 saigas—most of the global population—died suddenly in a mega-death event. Scientists later discovered that the culprit was a previously harmless strain of bacteria living in the animals’ tonsils for years that spread to their bloodstreams when the climate became unseasonably hot and humid. Given the countless known and unknown strains of bacteria that live in the human body, the notion that microbes might change their behavior so dramatically due to climate change is a scary thought indeed.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary: “Economic Collapse”
While many view the work needed to address climate change in terms of economic trade-offs, Wallace-Wells forecasts enormous long-term damage to markets as a result of climate change. Furthermore, he rejects the argument that economic growth should take precedence over all other concerns, particularly given his view that so much of the growth of the 19th and 20th centuries can be attributed to fossil fuels, as opposed to innovation or entrepreneurial gusto.
Citing research from the economists Solomon Hsiang, Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel, the author writes that for every degree Celsius of warming, economic growth slows by 1%. If no action is taken to address climate change, economists predict that global output will drop by over 20% by 2100. As points of comparison, global output dropped by 2% during the Great Recession and by 15% during the Great Depression. Even worse, those previous dips in economic activity were understood to be temporary. In an economic crisis caused by climate change, however, there may be no way to effectively bounce back. The author writes, “What climate change has in store is not that kind of thing—not a Great Recession or a Great Depression but, in economic terms, a Great Dying” (119).
The reasons for this economic decline are rooted in the topics of the previous chapters. Failing crop yields will decimate farmers. Flooding will impact millions of homes and businesses in the United States that are collectively worth over a trillion dollars at present. Already, train tracks have warped due to intense heat, and European power plants have temporarily suspended operations because the cooling liquids became too hot as a result of higher temperatures.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “Climate Conflict”
As he stated earlier, Wallace-Wells believes that climate change and the droughts that resulted from it were a significant factor in sparking the Syrian Civil War. He also, however, points out that neighboring Lebanon suffered a similarly harsh period of drought and crop failures while avoiding a violent civil war. To this point, he writes, “But wars are not caused by climate change only in the same way that hurricanes are not caused by climate change, which is to say they are made more likely, which is to say the distinction is semantic” (124).
To support this view, the author points out that the US Department of Defense is “obsessed” with climate change, a fact that hasn’t changed under Donald Trump despite the president’s sanguine rhetoric surrounding the issue. China is investing billions to construct artificial islands in the South China Sea, perhaps in an effort to maintain its status as a military superpower in a world ravaged by flooding. Meanwhile, whole fields of research have emerged devoted to the relationship between climate change and war. This research predicts that in Africa alone, climate change will contribute to the deaths of 393,000 more people in armed conflicts. In explaining why this is, Wallace-Wells cites statistics linking drought and crop failure to radicalization by militant groups including ISIS, the Taliban, and Boko Haram. While the local effects of these climate conflicts are desperation and poverty, the outbound effects include throngs of often unwanted refugees flooding into more stable nations. The author also points to various ancient civilizations that crumbled amid climate pressures, including Rome, Egypt, and Akkadia.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Systems”
Wallace-Wells takes a step back to reexamine some of the broader systemic consequences of climate change in light of the topics explored in previous chapters. Already, he writes, there are 22 million climate refugees, a figure that stands to increase dramatically over the next three decades. The author also identifies a great amount of injustice in how climate suffering will be distributed. The United Kingdom, for example—which he argues effectively put the climate crisis in motion by being the first to extract energy from coal on an industrial scale—will suffer far less than the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is among the world’s poorest nations and one with very few emissions to its name.
As human bodies suffer, so will human minds. Research suggests that 62% of those evacuated during Hurricane Katrina suffered from acute stress disorder, and a third suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Children suffer most, as research shows that 90% of adolescents affected by 1998’s Hurricane Mitch in Central America experienced symptoms of PTSD. Even those not directly affected by climate change may experience “environmental grief,” in the words of Scientific American.
Part 2, Chapters 8-13 Analysis
Given nuclear power’s potential to combat climate change, it is worth examining some of Wallace-Wells’s arguments on the matter, which he introduces in his chapter on air pollution. Aside from the ways in which nuclear power could help dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, it could also alleviate a disturbing public health crisis: that air pollution from fossil fuels is estimated to cause thousands of deaths per day. For this reason, even though air pollution is usually only an indirect consequence of climate change, Wallace-Wells still considers it an important part of the conversation on emissions reductions, given that its impact on morbidity is far more pronounced and visible than the deaths caused by climate change at present.
Given that nuclear power is a low-carbon source of energy, it stands to reason that emissions could be drastically cut through its use. The author sees promise in nuclear power, maybe even too much promise: He writes that more people die each day of air pollution than the number of people ever “affected” by nuclear power, a somewhat misleading statistic given that over 100,000 people were evacuated in the months following the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.
Nevertheless, the author’s grim projections for the fate of the planet, combined with the comparatively low human impact of nuclear power, beg the question: Why has so much money been invested in renewable energy and carbon capture methods—the latter of which the author calls “something close to fantasy” (45)—even as countries like Germany effectively dismantle their nuclear programs? Aside from what he considers unwarranted fear from a broad sector of the general public, Wallace-Wells doesn’t have an answer. However, as Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic, nuclear power only reduces emissions from the electricity sector, which produces just around a quarter of US emissions (Meyer, Robinson. “Why Nuclear Power Cannot Solve Climate Change Alone.” The Atlantic. 5 Mar. 2019). In other words, there is no magic bullet. As the author repeatedly makes clear, however, climate change is not a yes-or-no proposition, and even small differences in global temperature spikes can make a huge difference.
Wallace-Wells details at length the possible negative consequences of geoengineering. The idea of reengineering the climate through dramatic and arguably dangerous means has lost little steam since the publication of The Uninhabitable Earth. David King, one of the architects of the Paris Accords, is in the process of establishing a Center for Climate Repair at Cambridge University. Among the technologies earmarked for research at the proposed center is the very sulphate aerosol particle scheme described in the book. The fact that daring gambits such as this are as much a part of the climate conversation as proven, albeit risky, technologies like nuclear power, is one of many examples in the book reflecting the complicated technological dynamics of climate change, which the author explores later.
In keeping with his examination of the relationship between global warming and politics, the author cites research showing that climate change was a factor in the falls of various ancient civilizations in Rome, Egypt, and Akkadia. Particularly in the case of Rome, there is an enormous amount of scholarship to back up these claims. During the height of the Roman Empire between 200 B.C. and 150 A.D., its dominion experienced a largely wet and stable climate that was advantageous to growing crops. Around the time Rome began its decline, its climate became far more erratic, as cold spells and droughts afflicted its countryside. When one of these droughts was followed promptly by a devastating pandemic, Rome suffered a demographic crisis that allowed enemies to flood its borders. The empire regained stability in the fourth century before climate crisis struck again, albeit one of a tertiary nature. After a megadrought struck Central Asia, the nomadic Huns moved into Europe, thereby causing the Goths to relocate by launching a successful invasion of Rome. These climate crises, it should be noted, were not manmade like post-Industrial global warming. Nevertheless, they reflect how sensitive civilizations are to climate change, a crucial theme in The Uninhabitable Earth.
Wallace-Wells also addresses the global economic fallout he expects to see as temperatures continue to rise—fallout that has the potential to cause civilizations to buckle like Rome did. This discussion speaks to one of the book’s most salient arguments: that the economic damage caused by climate change will far outweigh the economic costs of decarbonizing industry. Wallace-Wells cites the surprising statistic that despite propaganda suggesting that climate action would devastate markets, a set of rapid energy transition policies would in fact lead to global savings in the amount of $26 trillion by 2030. If that seems difficult to believe, it’s useful to look to some secondary sources to support this.
According to Vox climate reporter David Roberts, one must first consider the fast-rising costs of climate change, illustrated most clearly in the billions spent each year to address extreme weather events, which are occurring with far more frequency than ever before. Moreover, this is a critical moment for building clean energy systems—not only because time is running out in the fight to keep global temperatures down, but also because the developed world is poised for a major infrastructure boom over the next decade (Roberts, David. “We Could Shift to Sustainability and Save $26 Trillion. Why Aren’t We Doing It?” Vox. 6 Sep. 2018). Given the fast-declining costs of renewables, it will be far cheaper in the long-term for this infrastructure build-out to be based around clean energy.
On the topic of increasingly cheaper renewable energy, the author points out that one of the biggest problems with clean energy implementation is that, at present, it is supplementing rather than replacing fossil fuels, driving economic growth without reducing emissions. This idea plays into the author’s broader theme that economic growth should not be the primary metric used to measure human progress. The basis for this argument comes largely from the work of ecologist Andreas Malm. In his 2016 book Fossil Capital, Malm argues that there is an intrinsic link between capital accumulation and fossil fuels. Thus, the history of capitalism is really the history of fossil fuels, and therefore the elimination of fossil fuel production will require a new economic paradigm, perhaps something akin to what Malm calls “ecological Leninism” (Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. New York: Verso. 2016). Wallace-Wells concedes that Malm’s is a minority view among economists, though hardly a fringe one, yet he also points out, “You do not have to believe that economic growth is a mirage produced by fossil fumes to worry that climate change is a threat to it” (116).
Finally, in this section, the author presents his conclusions on climate change and the spread of disease. While his view on the increased threat posed by mosquito-borne illnesses is shared by a majority of climate scientists and epidemiologists, the science behind ancient pathogens released from melting permafrost is less clear. On first glance, the case of the Russian boy who died from exposure to anthrax from a thawed reindeer carcass would seem to offer definitive proof of the danger of these zombie pathogens, but NPR health reporter Michaeleen Doucleff offers a different perspective, writing:
In terms of zombie bacteria, anthrax is a red herring. Anthrax has been ‘rising up’ from soils all over the world for millennia, even longer. The bacteria survive by hibernating in the ground until conditions are right and then spring back to life. Back in the Middle Ages, it was common to see fields of dead sheep in Europe, wiped out by ‘zombie’ anthrax. The French called these fields champs maudits, or the ‘cursed fields’ (Doucleff, Michaeleen. “Are There Zombie Viruses in the Thawing Permafrost?” NPR. 24 Jan. 2018).
Doucleff concludes that perhaps the bigger fear is not the spontaneous reanimation of ancient microbes from thawing ice and permafrost, but rather the efforts of scientists to resuscitate these microbes in a lab setting.
