An edition of The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)

The Uninhabitable Earth

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  • 3.9 (9 ratings)
  • 85 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 13 Have read

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Last edited by MARC Bot
April 14, 2026 | History
An edition of The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)

The Uninhabitable Earth

  • 3.9 (9 ratings)
  • 85 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 13 Have read

The signs of climate change are unmistakable even today, but the real transformations have hardly begun. For a generation, we've been taught that warming was a problem of arctic melting and sea levels rising, but in fact it promises to be all-enveloping, driving dramatic changes at every level of our lives, from everyday matters like the supply of chocolate and coffee (likely to dry up) to public health (tens of millions likely to die from pollution) to climate migration (hundreds of millions fleeing unlivable, overheated homelands). We've been taught that warming would be slow-but, barring very dramatic action, each of these impacts is likely to arrive within the length of a new home mortgage signed this year. What will it be like to live on a planet pummeled in these ways? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? What will it mean for our collective appetite for climate action? And what explains the fact we have done so little to stop it? These are not abstract scientific questions but immediate and pressing human dramas, dilemmas and nightmares. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells undertakes a new kind of storytelling and a new kind of social science to explore the era of human history on which we have just embarked.

Publish Date
Publisher
Allen Lane
Language
English
Pages
208

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Uninhabitable Earth
Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming
2023, Random House Children's Books
in English
Cover of: Uninhabitable Earth
Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming
2023, Random House Children's Books
in English
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Mar 17, 2020, Tim Duggan Books
paperback
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Mar 17, 2020, Tim Duggan Books
paperback
Cover of: El planeta inhóspito : La vida después del calentamiento / The Uninhabitable Earth
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth
May 07, 2019, Allen Lane
hardcover in English
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth
2019, Penguin Books Ltd
Audiobook
Cover of: Den ubeboelige planeten
Den ubeboelige planeten: En fortelling om fremtiden på jorden
2019, J. M. Stenersens Forlag
Hardcover in Bokmål
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
2019, Tim Duggan Books
in English - First edition
Cover of: Uninhabitable Earth
Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
2019, Penguin Books, Limited
in English
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
Sep 05, 2019, Penguin
paperback
Cover of: Uninhabitable Earth
Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
2019, Penguin Books, Limited
in English
Cover of: The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming
Feb 19, 2019, Random House LCC US
paperback

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Book Details


Classifications

Library of Congress
QC903, GF75 .W36 2019

The Physical Object

Format
hardcover
Number of pages
208

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL27336708M
ISBN 10
0241355214
ISBN 13
9780241355213
OCLC/WorldCat
1085138276
Amazon ID (ASIN)
0241355214

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL19096883W

Work Description

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible--food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.

An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation's Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it--the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.

The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation--today's.

Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth:

"The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet."--Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

"Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells's outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too."--The Economist

"Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the 'eerily banal language of climatology' in favor of lush, rolling prose."--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"The book has potential to be this generation's Silent Spring."--The Washington Post

"The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book."--Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

No.1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon."--Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

With a new afterword

Source: Publisher

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