The Uninhabitable Earth, a multi-part report...
I have thought for a long time that climate change was the largest problem facing us. But I, like others get distracted by the newest shiny object of the day. “What racist thing did Trump say/do today? “How long have those children been locked in cages by our government?” “The newest federal judge believes what about women’s bodies?” “The Democratic party is in shambles, again?” “Republicans are so stupid.” “Damn, Republicans are just straight up evil.”
Recently though, I have discovered podcasts. Amazing really. I am on the older fringe of being a millennial and I avoided smartphones until last year and just started to listen to podcasts in the past few months because NPR was really starting to upset me with its rightward slant.
I stumbled onto the Chris Hayes, “Why is This Happening?” podcast (WITHPod) and I haven’t looked back. Basically, every week he interviews someone who is really smart and interesting about a specific topic. They have a conversation for an hour and afterwards you (I) feel like you know a lot more about a subject than you did before.
This week’s WITHPod had David Wallace-Wells on as the guest. He is making the book tour rounds because he has a new book out, “The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming” out. So, Chris and David talked about the effects of climate change for an hour. It was sobering, to say the least. It’s a great listen and I recommend it, if you are into podcasts, or not. It’s an hour-long conversation that is a real wake-up call if you have not been paying close enough attention to the climate change issue. And frankly, I feel that a fatally large number of us aren’t giving the ongoing and worsening catastrophe that is climate change enough airtime in our minds.
David Wallace-Well works at New York magazine and in 2017 he wrote ‘The Uninhabitable Earth” as an article in New York magazine. It was criticized, partially, for being too pessimistic. I remember seeing an article in The Atlantic about how Wallace-Wells’s claims were too dramatic, and that it wasn’t going to be as bad as all that.
Well, it seems that every day we get new news about more things going wrong in the environment, and human civilization seems to be whistling past the graveyard.
I went out and bought the book and started reading it. I want to get some more attention for climate change out there, so I am going to write a book report on “The Uninhabitable Earth” broken down into the different sections of the book as I finish reading them. I will probably finish reading each section and write a new diary every few days. I hope you enjoy the diaries, but more importantly, that you feel inspired to take action by demanding climate change policy/legislation from your elected officials. Sure, you can give up meat or drive less, or try to not use air conditioning as much. It might make you feel better, but it doesn’t change what everyone else is doing. Collective action is the only thing that can help us fight the devastating effects of climate change. We are all in this together, literally. And we needed to start yesterday. So let’s go!
Peace,
BL Hokie