Just as climate change’s many cascades threaten to multiply and compound as they wash away the infrastructure of our society on any level, Wallace-Wells offers a barrage of data that offers an unflinching and terrifying look at how industrialization and the idea of the Anthropocene, or an era of human domination, has forever changed the course of our planet’s history. While it may seem that a certain storm, like 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, is a once-in-a-lifetime event, the reality is that the globe is warmer right now than it has been at any point in all of human history-and it’s only getting hotter. By examining these massive natural disasters decade by decade, Wallace-Wells charts the rapidly worsening effects of warming on everyday life. Along the way, Wallace-Wells closely examines many major record-setting weather events, such as 1988’s Hurricane Mitch, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, and 2017’s Thomas Fire in Southern California. He looks as far ahead as 2100 as he offers data-driven, climatologist-backed projections of what the Earth will look like at the end of the century if climate change continues to ravage the planet at its current rate. Wallace-Wells swings from the Earth’s past-12,000 years ago, when humans first began farming and cultivating lands-to its future. The Uninhabitable Earth is a book both tied to history and unbound from it.
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