The Uninhabitable Earth by Wallace Wells is a very ominous piece of writing.  Throughout the entire text, there has been constant examples of things that have gone wrong in the world due to climate change and how mankind has brought about this destruction. So it is suprising to see Wallace say, “But those horrors are not yet scripted (31).”  He talks about the struggles that future earthwill face and yet talks about having a child that will experience this future. It made me realize that his previous comment, “The thing is, I am optimistic (31),” really defines the direction that he takes with the rest of his writing.  He is confident that these issues engineered by humans can be controlled by new innovative solutions that could be discovered. I found this approach counter productive because his optimism feels lackluster. He gave over 15 pages of reasons the world is doomed. Comparing the doom to events in history such as the holocaust “150 million is the equivalent of twenty-five Holocausts (28).”  He states things like, “By the end of the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear winter had clouded every corner of our pop culture and psychology (29).” He is very convincing with the world’s demise that it is hard to follow his optmistic logic.

In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells’ writing is the embodiment of the reckless not-my-responsibility he accuses modern-western-humanity of. 

The planet survived many millennia without anything approaching a world government, in fact endured nearly the entire span of human civilization that way, organized into competitive tribes and fiefdoms and kingdoms and nation-states, and only began to build something resembling a cooperative blueprint, very piecemeal, after brutal world wars-in the form of the League of Nations and United Nations and European Union and even the market fabric of globalization, whatever its flaws still a vision of cross-national participation, imbued with the neoliberal ethos that life on Earth was a positive-sum game. (Wallace-Wells 25)

Sorry for the blockquote, but where is the period? As you can see, Wallace-Wells (WW) has a wonderfully descriptive and illuminating style, but if we examine his work, we find something unsettling. WW writes like an ivy league educated tech-bro that aims to ‘disrupt the mainstream,’ he throws convention aside– and makes the reader do the work to find the thesis, beginning, and ending of his argument. WW goes on to write that a global crisis like climate change should be the catalyst that brings the world together when we are doing the complete opposite. On page 25, Wallace-Wells writes that the western world is “recoiling into nationalistic corners and retreating from collective responsibility and from each other.” Well said WW, now please use your privilege for the common good and sprinkle a few more periods down from that golden perch of yours.  

Golden perch, ivory tower, whatever, I feel like I need to make a concession. WW does not need to write to the common man, and I do not believe this book is targeted to the common man. With this in mind, I think WW is doing the most good he can do with his laptop keyboard. Let me explain myself a little more. I have a very progressive friend that does not recycle; she says it is because the global environmental crisis we are facing has little to do with individual responsibility. She finds that most of the fault lies at the feet of a massive industry and leviathan corporations. Who better to write to the modern-day robber baron than an ivy league educated son-of-New York, part-time writer, part-time podcaster, with coiffed hair and a sculpted jawline (Wikipedia). Did I mention he is married to an art dealer (thecut.com)?

Works Cited

((((I DONT KNOW HOW TO MAKE THIS WORK ON HERE, BUT ON MY WORD DOC THE FORMATTING WAS CORRECT!))))

“David Wallace-Wells.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Feb. 2020, 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wallace-Wells.

The Cut. “New York Magazine’s Sex Lives Podcast: The Couple That Shares a Toothbrush.”

 The Cut, The Cut, 19 Aug. 2016, www.thecut.com/2016/08/couple-that-shares-a-toothbrush.html.

WALLACE-WELLS, DAVID. UNINHABITABLE EARTH: Life after Warming. 

TIM DUGGAN  BOOKS, 2020.

David Wallace-Wells discusses climate change and the inevitable fate we have set up for ourselves by ignoring climate change in his book UNINHABITABLE EARTH: Life after Warming. Wallace explains that due to the fact that we remain mostly idle and refuse to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions we are sealing our fate of our eventual demise. Wallace uses many examples of abnormalities that we see everyday, which in fact we should not. One example that really stood out to me was when Wallace was describing the aftermath of the mudslides in California, “More than a dozen died, including a toddler swept away by mud and carried miles down the mountainslope to the sea; schools closed and highways flooded, foreclosing the routes of emergency vehicles and making the community an inland island, as if behind a blockade, choked off by a mud noose.” (Wallace, 21) What really stood out was the imagery of a noose made of mud, while obviously not very practically it stuck with me throughout the reading. Wallace also revistes the idea of a noose later on while discussing the real dangers of wind disasters, “ Wind Disasters do not kill by wind, however brutal it gets, but by tugging trees out of earth and transforming them into clubs, making power lines into loose whips and electrified nooses.” (Wallace, 23) Once again wallace uses the idea of a noose to really cement the idea of how deadly climate change really is.

WALLACE-WELLS, DAVID. UNINHABITABLE EARTH: Life after Warming. TIM DUGGAN BOOKS, 2020.

In “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells, Wells explores the idea that “climate change isn’t happening here or there but everywhere and all at once” (5).  He makes very effective points by exploring the monstrous natural disasters that affect humans across the globe regardless of their economic status and homeland.

Wells details that the wildfires that ravished the “most glamorous state” of California in 2018, are as equally destructive as those that hit the impoverished Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (6).  Natural disasters do not see wealth. They don’t just target the poor and less fortunate. They occur everywhere. However, the most affected humans do not live in the posh communities of Santa Barbara,  but in the poorest countries and towns.   Inhabitants of these hardest hit locations live in swamps and floodplains and don’t have the economics to support a rebuild of their community after such disasters occur (9).

Well states that “climate change is too indiscriminate” (9).  Climate change is a global threat to all humans that plausibly warrants a full global response.  However, that global response is still not happening and Wells claims that humans are unfortunately retreating from assuming responsibility to global warming and to one another (10).

Jenny student

English 110

Professor Eric

February 19 , 2020

1.                                             The uninhabitable earth ” life after warming “

The uninhabitable earth is a incredible book written by  David Wallace , describing      how hurricanes touch the atlantic and multiples rainfalls.  This book is a summary of all the natural disasters touching the surface earth for decades  .

1. According to Wallace Wells California governor Jerry Brown described the state of things in the midst of the state ‘s wildfire disaster  ” a new normal ” (18 ) . When we analyse these situations like the temperature getting warmer  , we see that tropical storms become more frequent  , the heat waves have caused tens of thousands of death around  the world , especially California where the forest become more drier each day and caught on fire ,           with less water the temperature become overheated . As the temperature   rise , wildfires season is getting longer and warming oceans . The sea rise higher and faster . when we examine such situations we arrive at the conclusion to say climate change .    David Wallace said  ” it tempting to look at these strings of disasters and think climate change is here  “(18) . And I think personally  we leaving in that moment now , the evidence of climate change is all around us and by my understanding this situation is not a new normal .
3. Wallace writing  ” even if miraculously humans immediately ceases emitting carbon we still be due for some additional warming from just the stuff we’ve put into the air already  ” (19) am not agree with that sentence cause it’s never too late to act every little step we make can contribute as changing the situation  .In our home by example we can start using less energy , and recycle ,  while saving more money    , planting tree it’s fun , but can  also contribute too save the ecosystem . With  all those little action we can one day win the planet back .

In the book “The Unihabitable Earth” David Wallace-Well compares climate change to Cold War (29). Wallace-Well emphasizes the fact that in the past human race was on a brink of extinction, at that time it was threatened by “just a few sets of itchy hands hovering over the planet’s self destruct buttons” (29). It was everyone’s common knowledge for 45 years, present  in  households, schools, “pop culture and psychology”. People were aware and scared of the “prospect of nuclear winter” and even though they couldn’t physically prevent it, they still were taking precautions and they were getting educated on it.

In comparison Wallace-Well acknowledges “the threat of climate change” as “more dramatic” (29).  He also suggests that it’s more democratic than Cold War, because we all are in some way responsible for it. The fear is present, but perhaps is not as common, by the personal threat being less specific and straightforward, and the outcome of it unclear and placed in our “possible future”. In the end we indulge ourselves in a very practical self preservation mechanism: “someone else will fix the problem for us, at no cost” (30).

Wallace-Well mentions that climate change is called “existential crisis” and he places our perspectives between two hypothetical outcomes: “death and suffering at the scale of twenty-five Holocausts”, or “the brink of extinction” (29). In the meantime many of us instead of taking some action are choosing to live “consumer fantasy” whilst ignoring the future, still.