Theme Topic Jan 2020- Book on Environmentby Aaditya Singh | 02-02-2020 21:07 |
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 Book Review A Story of the Future written (Print Version) and read (Audio book) by David Wallace-Wells 2019 Penguin Books #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 To quote the author hiimself... "It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. Over the past decades, the term 'Anthropocene' has climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live - the planet no longer nurturing a dream of abundance but a living nightmare." The Uninhabitable Earth is recognised as an epoch and defining book. The book gives an insight as to what the future will be if things are allowed to continue the way that they are. The book is a warning almost with a scary tone. It highlights that sea levels rising is nothing compared to the dangers of global warming going forward including perils such as Food shortages, Climate wars, Refugee emergencies, and Economic devastation. The book discusses various controversial topics and has received a lot of critique for being too pessimistic or unrealistic but the author stands by his prediction and has even been backed up by some scientists. Some of these topics are related to how the climate crisis will transform global politics, how technology and nature will be affected and the effects this will have on us humans, the sustainability of capitalism and even the trajectory of human evolution. The author intends his book to be a call to action to empower today¡¯s generation to make changes. This is further influenced by enhancing the power of fear which Wallace-Wells uses as a tool in his writing to scare or alarm the readers and encourage immediate action. He ensures that he gets his point across by going to the extreme of saying that extinction is also a possibility in the foreseeable future. My apologies for a late report. I wanted to read the book amidst end of term school work and exams, and then write the report. I encourage fellow members of the forum to get their hands on the book (Print or Audio version). Please follow the link in the sources part at the end of my report, to hear the author speak about the book. I would classify the book as fearful but at the same time hopeful in asking for positive action.Generally I am more in favor of positive ways of raising awareness but perhaps humankind needs a healthy dose of fear to mend their ways! Sources and References The book itself https://www.youtube.com/watch? |
