David Wallace-Wells Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

David Wallace- Wells is an American nonfiction author of the Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, published in 2019. The book talks about what global warming will bring to earth in the future if no measures are taken. He is a national fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine.

The Unthinkable Earth: Life After Warming
This is a unique novel about the prognosis of planet earth. It’s not a pretty happy one, and the contents are devastating. If things go at the current pace, by 2100, temperatures will rise by more than 4 degrees.

The book’s structure is simple as Wallace divides the planet into 12 plagues. The plagues include drowning, heat death, unnatural disasters, wildfire, dying oceans, warming plagues, freshwater drain, climate conflict, economic collapse, unbreathable air, and ‘systems.’ Each paragraph consists of facts and citations concerning the aspect.

Since Wallace’s career is focused on climate change, he has all resources and sources at arm’s length. All the 12 plagues are related and have feedback loops that can worsen the situation into a disaster.

Large areas of Africa, the United States, Australia, South America, and Asia will be soon become inhabitable. The IPCC is a very conservative group, and the only research they consider is the most recent. They say immediate actions are taken to implement the agreements made in Paris; most likely, there will be 3.2 degrees extra warming.

The ice sheets covering the planet will collapse, and most of the major cities in the world will be flooded.
None of the industrial nations has honored the pledges made in the Paris climate treaty. In order for the world to attain 2 degrees less warming, the countries have to honor their pledges. President Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty would be productive, and it appears it mobilized china, offering Xi Jinping a chance and enticement to adopt a more aggressive view on the climate

China is among the largest carbon footprint known. It consists of half the planet’s coal power capacity, and emissions have gone up by 4% during the first three months of 2018. Worldwide, coal power has almost doubled since 2000.

As carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, the plants grow higher, sugar being their major constituent. However, the other nutrients in the plants do not increase proportionally, meaning the nutrients will be diluted even in the human food supply. Since 1950, the essential nutrients in plants like calcium, iron, protein, and vitamin C have decreased by a third. Everything becomes more like junk food.

The last time the earth was 4 degrees warmer, the ice collapsed at both poles, the sea level became 260 feet higher, and palm trees in the Arctic appeared. Peter Wadhams approximated that reducing the albedo effect could produce up to 25 years of global carbon emissions.

The Wildfires are going up in number and intensity in California, while in America, wildfires currently burn two times as much land as in the year 1970. The fires have also gone up in Greenland, Finland, and Sweden.

The hotter it becomes, the more the number of wildfires, which releases more carbon in the atmosphere leading to increased temperatures.
Coal burning is among the biggest culprits in air pollution and has been a significant problem in many countries. The introduction of EZ-pass in America decreased the number of premature deaths, low birth weight by 11 % in toll booths since car exhaust is more as the car slows down.

Aerosol pollution reflects sunlight into the space reducing the rate of global warming. Geo-engineering can be applied to inject aerosols into the upper atmosphere to decrease global warming and degrade air quality.

In a study done in 2016, it was found out that the world’s ethnically diverse countries started during months of a weather disaster. Around 32 countries face a great risk of conflict and civil chaos due to climate disruptions in the next thirty years.

The under-developed countries will be the most affected while the most developed will suffer less. Research has shown that environmental disaster promotes diseases and mental instability.

Climate change is something that cannot be argued about. Some say it’s caused by natural cycles, and that’s why it should be a big concern since this simplifies it beyond control. The belief that climate change is brought about by human activity can be a little comfort because it implies that people have some control.

Spending trillions in fossil fuel subsidies appears more complex than using technologies to suck the carbon from the air. Increased technology change has not fully improved the economy, and even though the green energy revolution has increased productivity and reduced cost, but increased carbon.
The leading cause of dirty energy sources is due to the fact that they are not replaced with new ones. The book is about the ‘terrifying and inconvenient truth’ that is likely to happen in the future.