My eyes have been opened and my mind officially blown (yes, that would render the aforementioned eyes useless, which is kinda how I feel at the moment).

I was definitely ignorant to how far down the road to Armageddon we have travelled. This book has definitely changed my outlook on life and how the next two generations, in particular, are going to be affected. Yes, the earth is destined for a lot of suffering in the near future, but if we choose to make the changes necessary to ensure there is a cap on that suffering, and how we manage that suffering are the two main questions that are left hanging.

I must admit, this book has been haunting my conscious and unconscious thoughts over the last few weeks, which is a testament to the power of the message. I am also left feeling largely powerless (is that nihilistic of me?) as change can only really be successful if it comes from top down. I suppose our influence on our governments/leaders is the only real effect we can make. Being individually green just ain’t going to crack it, when something as simple as the generation of cryptocurrency is more detrimental then the individual actions of millions of people.

One gripe I do have of the book is that for a book that is directed at a global audience, the choice to only use Fahrenheit to relay temperatures is exceptionally frustrating!

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Books for a review copy

Hair raising...
26 February 2019
Format: Kindle Edition
I'm sitting in South England and today the temperature has been over 16°C. This time last year in this very same place we had been buffeted by what we called "the beast from the East" and there was a generous layer of snow on the ground... Something is happening to the Earth's climate and it is disturbing. This book is an extremely good attempt to explain the why's and wherefore's of climate change, it is not therefore an easy read either in terms of its prose or its content. The first chapter is an overview which attempts to explain the causes and above all the effects that a rise in the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere will cause. Subsequent chapters explain these effects on particular aspects of human such as the economy. The author is none-the-less optimistic and hopeful that human ingenuity based on awareness of these processes will be able to control or overcome them somewhat.

This is overall I would say, a NECESSARY book but crammed as it is with facts and figures I couldn't but wonder whether the message it is hoping to deliver wouldn't be more effective in another format, for example documentary. I was also disappointed in the chapter on Diseases, that only existing and suppressed diseases were included rather than the possibility of the emergence of new diseases, although perhaps this might exceed the brief set for the book.

Finally a major quibble, all temperatures are given in Fahrenheit, as a person raised using the centigrade system they therefore meant nothing to me... Why is it not possible to include centigrade in brackets following the temperatures in Fahrenheit? It would have allowed me to get much more involved in the book that I was.

An interesting, but gloomy, read. Not recommended if you are feeling at a low ebb!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for my honest review.

This book isn’t written for the masses, though the messages within need to be read out loud and clear to all.

With evidence based facts and references to articles written, sadly, only those who take heed of the stark warnings are the ones that care, the ones who’s health, well being and living environments are directly affected, and those whom are losing money because of it.

Coined under the term “climate change” and the effects of carbon emissions, living conditions will sharply diminish. Rising temperatures, food shortages, rising water levels, land loss, and air pollution; Geoengineering to try and clean up our mess, which in itself still avoids dealing with the very thing causing our problem and will cause issues for us all, mainly the weak and suffering. Bacteria and viruses, the economy, and productivity - it comes back to money, unequal distribution of world suffering and whether the cost to go green is worth the money.

I’m passionate, and suffering, from the effects of pollution. The world is unbalanced and we are all responsible. We are making ourselves suffer. We never had to or have to continue to live like this. We created this way of modern living. Whilst the planet will go through it’s natural phases, us speeding up the destructive process, will be our demise. So, how do we get everyone to read this, listen and take action? How do you change the minds of the unconvinced, the un-suffering, the “it’s not my problem” and “I’ll be dead before it makes any difference to me?”

So far removed from where we should be, how do you convince those with the powers that be to take seriously our plight and get on board to stop our suffering? Why are we even having to fight for clean air, clean food etc... when it is vital to our very existence. What sad times we live in.

This is not for the faint hearted. Wallace-Wells has penned an utterly terrifying clarion call to action – and it may already be too late. Strangely lyrical in its delivery, The Uninhabitable Earth hits hard and is at times even unpleasant to read. But climate change is real and there are horrors in store. It’s a wakeup call we sorely need.

My thanks to NetGalley and Publishers for the ARC.
Oh My Goodness! OK, I'll put my hands up to being on the questioningly-sceptical side as far as global warming is concerned - after all, the Earth has had temperature rises, let alone ice-ages before in all its history, and we now happen to be around just as another activity is occurring, with enough intellect to rationalise it as now being man-made.. However, I really hadn't considered the ramifications, the cascading effects, of individual changes on insect-life, plant-life, agriculture, movement of people and diseases. In the first third of this book David Wallace-Wells sets these out clearly, backed with scientific research, in a well-written, give-it-to-me-straight form of words - and it is indeed frightening. I would recommend this reading to all who may still be considering the truth of global warming.
However, once onto the subject of governments and political wills of nations the style of writing changes such that I seemed to have stumbled into reading an academic thesis, and this rather turned off my initial enthusiasm and I merely skimmed through until discovering that the last half of the book was a listing of the massive amount of research which had been used to compile an almost meta-data analysis of the scientific findings.
So, first third of the book - terrific, gave food for thought, was very well written and extremely persuasive; second half was rather too politically-based for me.

This book lays out the horrifying facts about climate change in a compelling and urgent way.

In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells takes a comprehensive stroll through the very real perils that the world is facing from climate change. He opens with a devastating picture of just how quickly we’re going to see real suffering and destruction, running through a number of scenarios of varying magnitudes. He references recent weather events that were incredibly disruptive, and goes on to explain how the scale of these pales into insignificance in comparison with what is coming.

Then he dives more deeply into separate areas: heat death, hunger, drowning and so on. Each of these chapters again forcibly makes its point over and over as Wallace-Wells presents the unassailable research that backs all of this up.

The prospects for a time as close as 2100 seem truly awful. If that seems distant then think about a child born today. They might comfortably expect to still be alive in 2100, aged just 81.

The horrors compound on each other. All of the evidence is detailed in well over a hundred pages of very comprehensive notes, where arguments are often developed further. The interested reader has no end of further exploration available to them.

The book does grapple a bit with the fact that even though we sort-of know a lot of this, political will is rarely there to do anything about it. From the Paris accord to the rapid industrialisation of countries like China or India. We live for the now and not for tomorrow.

There’s also an interesting argument about how climate change rarely features as a “villain” in popular culture. The Day After Tomorrow aside, we prefer to see our climate villains as big business chiefs who don’t care about pollution or oil company executives. We need a person rather than a thing to blame.

And it’s to the author’s credit that he also explores the extremists who posit that humanity is going to end in the very near future. As ever, deep within YouTube and the internet, there are those who make these claims which aren’t supported by proper science. This kind of over-claiming doesn’t help, because one of the challenges climate scientists face is getting outright dismissal of everything if anything they ever say doesn’t come true. Wallace-Wells argues that this has led to scientists painting a sometimes brighter picture than they really should.

My only real complaints are the book are the sections that consider life elsewhere in the universe. While he rightly poo-poos thoughts that we can just build a colony on Mars or somewhere – places that have vastly more extreme weather than even the worst outcomes we might get on earth in the foreseeable future – discussions about life elsewhere aren’t really extensive enough. Paul Davies’ 2010 The Eerie Silence is probably a better bet.

My other issue is do with mixed units of measurement. Units of temperature are usually Celsius, but because the author is American, we will sometimes jump to Fahrenheit. Similarly, measurements of height will switch between metres and feet, seemingly depending on where the science originated. The book should be consistently metric.

But overall, this is powerful book and the urgency is real.

“We all lived for money, and that is what we died for.”

I very much enjoyed this book, even if I didn't always agree with the method of delivery. The focus on worst case scenarios and also dubious statistics can be overwhelming but in my opinion this is rightly so- the truth lies somewhere in the middle yet is every bit as devastatingly frightening. I perhaps might have preferred the author stick as well to hard facts, a passage about 'guilt saturates the planet’s air' is springing to mind. Reliance on hyperbole I feel dilutes the overall message and can further embolden a worldwide trend to ignore the ugly truth- that this is indeed happening, faster even than we imagined or predicted and it is all our fault. To quote Wallace-Wells, 'And yet now, just as the need for...cooperation is paramount, indeed necessary for anything like the world we know to survive, we are only unbuilding...alliances— recoiling into nationalistic corners and retreating from collective responsibility and from each other.' I only hope that we and future generations see sense before it is too late.

Oh my. This is about the worst horror book or movie of all time. Except that it isn't fiction. This book should be compulsory reading for adults - especially ones with children - the way we're going we're are going to run out of world. We keep on adding to the damage we've done - the change that is needed is just being pushed down the road and down the road. Well the road is about to run out.

The world can live without us - but we can't live without the world. Waken up folks, it's time to change.

My thanks to Penguin Books U.K./Allen Lane for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Uninhabitable Earth: a Story of Our Future’ by David Wallace-Wells.

In July 2017 David Wallace-Wells wrote a long article for New York magazine that outlined a worse case scenario for the planet based on global warming. This is a book-length expansion of his original article.

This is an extremely important book that deserves a wide readership even if it makes for deeply distressing reading.

Since my teenage years I have tried to keep myself informed and also supported organisations such as Friends of the Earth, even though it has often seemed an uphill battle including seeking to control wildlife crime. Yet somehow the bigger, more serious issue has seemingly passed me by.

Wallace-Wells states in his owning section, ‘Cascades’, that in the following chapters he is not discussing the “tragic fate of animals” but instead concentrating on the costs to human lives. I found that I was relieved by this focus away from nature as I feared that I would feel overwhelmed.

However, he writes: “Any one of these twelve chapters contains, by rights, enough horror to induce a panic attack in even the most optimistic of those considering it. But you are not merely considering it; you are about to embark on living it. In many cases, in many places, we already are.”

Climate terror. Climate depression. Environmental grief. It was easy to feel all of these while reading and so I rationed myself and read only a few chapters each day. If I wasn’t reading and reviewing for an upcoming publication date I probably would have taken more time to absorb the material. Still, I don’t think any amount of time would have lessened the feeling of despair.

It is a very fact based work accompanied by copious notes at the end detailing his sources and allowing for further reading.

Thankfully although a very bleak picture, Wallace-Wells also writes: “I think you have to do everything you can to make the world accommodate dignified and flourishing life, rather than giving up early, before the fight has been lost or won, and acclimating yourself to a dreary future brought into being by others less concerned..”

A message to take to heart as the news almost daily recounts the reality of climate change and global warming. I feel that it is a book that I will be thinking a great deal about.

I hope to see it discussed widely and find a place in schools and libraries. Hopefully the message will also reach those who are in denial.

The most accurate terminology to describe this book: absolutely terrifying. It has the same impact a fantastic horror movie or novel does but with one very important difference - THIS IS REAL. If this doesn't wake earth's inhabitants up to our self-made, self-inflicted impending doom I don't know what will. I must add that this is so stark and horrifying that on the night I completed it I failed to sleep for thinking about everything David Wallace-Wells opens our eyes to. One of the hardest-hitting and thought-provoking works of nonfiction I've read in years, but it isn't for the faint of heart, and I've come to expect most people prefer to be ignorant to the truth rather than learning, accepting and then exploring ways to help make the situation better. However, it may already be too late, and unfortunately, this is one of those times where the adage "better late than never" does not apply.

If you're expecting a laid-back thesis on the ramifications of climate change then you have come to the wrong place; this is a wake-up call and a call to action. Time is no longer on our side in climate matters which is why books such as this are incredibly important. I have long been taught that if you cause something unexpected to happen that you at least try to put it right. It's like the object of civil liability in law which aims to put the victim back into the position they were in before the crime was committed, and whilst we can’t achieve that we can do things to change the destructive trajectory in which we are heading, but we must take heed and act post-haste.

All those seemingly subliminal messages we see, hear and internalise day in day out come together in this book and the author pulls no punches in bringing climate issues to readers consciousness and shouting loud and clear about the issues we face. His passion and commitment to the subject shine through, and although this holds some very scary messages there are also reasons to be hopeful. Ultimately, though, this is a masterful account of how we are well on our way to destroying our planet and ought to be in every school, public library and on the shelves of those of us who care about what the future will hold for our descendants.

Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.

This is not a comfortable and easy book. It's scary, full of darkness and - unfortunately - realistic forecasts of things to come.
It should be read everywhere to raise concern and to make people take a stand.
I don't think a review is enough to describe how much this book affected me, it would take pages.
A very good book, it will make you think and may be act.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Penguin Books and Netgalley for this ARC