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.

“Geology of Mankind” is an article written by Paul J. Crutzen , who is an accomplished scientist , who won the Nobel Prize and is working in the fields of chemistry and physics. The article was published in the “Nature” journal, on the 3rd of January, 2002. “Nature” is a very selective, prestigious science journal, publishing editorials, science research papers and the news being of interest to the science world. The audience of the journal are not ordinary people but mostly research scientists, multidisciplinary scientists and educated public.

The article addresses the global influence of mankind on the environment. In the first three paragraphs Crutzen focuses on describing anthropogenic effects on environment. He attempts an ambitious task of summarizing three centuries of human growing expansion in a very condense form. He starts with mentioning anthropocene, the term he’s been trying to popularize, moves through mankind’s influence on the environment  and lastly focuses on the scientific examples of the negative sides of it. In paragraph 3 we learn about human population increase, tropical forests disappearing, energy use growing, gasses and emissions, to mention just some of his examples. It’s all presented to us in the form of numbers, percentages and specific vocabulary. In the last paragraph Crutzen puts on the shoulders of the scientists and engineers of the world the task of leading the society towards the improvement of the environmental management. It should be done by implementing internationally some engineering projects to “optimize” climate.

The article is directed at a wide audience of scientists and highly educated people. That’s the reason why he uses a very complex and scientific vocabulary, uses a lots of facts, dates, percentages, and cities the other scientists. It may be overwhelming and confusing at times to the people with non scientific background. We also need to keep in mind the date of the publication and understand that all the information he’s given us is by now outdated.

In “Climate Change is Violence” , A excerpt from her book call “The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness“. In this particular piece you see how Rebecca Solnit stresses the importance of climate change and our response to it. She does this first by appealing to the readers ability to relate between two categories being extremely wealthy and not. This establish the role and tone for the article by allowing the reader to identify with a group and then read on the effects on that specific group. She stresses in the excerpt that Climate Change is not just something that is happening but something that directly impacts us and something that we should take serious/action against. She addresses this using pathos explaining the disproportion of harm in other countries with the effect of Climate change on food, ethos by appealing to the readers morals of right and wrong and logos by explaining the current effects of Climate Change that we all have access to knowing such as the French Revolution. Ultimately, she uses many methods to convey that Climate change is violence against us, and it is something that can be change but it has to be unified and the only way that can happen is if we change our view and the narrative of Climate Change.

To those not realizing what’s going on, Climate Change is violence. From the expert “The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness” by Rebecca Solnit. You may think. “Oh, it’s all common sense.” “We already know that Climate Change is violence.” “Blah, blah, blah.” But you know how?

Before getting into the “how”, think about what effect it and what was the result for it. Let me summarize the expert. So far in “The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness“, the authors talk about how we caused climate change in the first place. We were burning fossil fuel, which allows the gas to emission to the ozone layer, the layer that kept us away from radiation. However, the violent part is that we caused a hole in the ozone layer. Solnit then uses Hurricane Sandy as an example. This is the effect. The results are the migration of the population. May individuals moved because of storms. These storms are caused by climate change, which gets angry.

To me, at first, I see there is no personal response to that. However, in paragraph 10, it stated: “…food and medical care health and well-being, access to housing and education– these things are also governed by economic means and government policy.” and in paragraph 11, it stated: “Climate change will increase hunger as food prices rise and food production falters, but we already have widespread hunger on Earth, and much of its due not to the failures of nature and farmers, but to systems of distribution.” When I think of this quote, it got me wondering: “Why not make food free?” You can agree or disagree with me on my question, but if you really think about it, we never asked to starve to death and pay the price to survive.

Aside from that blunt statement, climate change results in crop failure. What we want to enjoy is destroyed by climate change. In my words: climate change is savage. Food destroys, moving to other places for shelter, terrible storms, it’s too much. But it because it’s all our fault.