author interview: transcript from NPR's talk with
"Rachel Martin: Author David Wallace-Wells opens his new book The Uninhabitable Earth outlining three misunderstandings about climate change. First it's speed:
Wallace-Wells: More than half of all the fossil fuel emissions that we've ever put into the atmosphere have come in the last 25 years. Which means that we've now done more damage to the climate than all of the millennia before and all of the centuries before.
Rachel Martin: Then it's scope:
Wallace-Wells: We were sort of taught that the problem was really about sea level and coastlines. We're starting to see that climate change is really an all-enveloping threat which promises to transform, probably deform, every life lived on the planet in some way.
Rachel Martin: And finally, it's severity:
Wallace-Wells: It was basically considered irresponsible to consider scenarios north of about two degrees of warming. It was called the Threshold of Catastrophe, and no one really wanted to think about it. It turns out that two degrees looks basically like our floor for warming rather than our ceiling. And so we really need to start thinking about what the impacts will be at two and a half, three and even four degrees of warming.
Rachel Martin: I asked him to explain what that kind of warming would look like:
Wallace-Wells: The absolute worse case scenario is that the planet becomes uninhabitable. I think that is vanishingly unlikely on any timescale that it makes sense for us to think about. But the crazy thing is that I don't think you need to look at worse case scenarios.
Rachel Martin: Right!
Wallace-Wells: So, end of the century, the UN says that we're going to be at 4.3° of warming if we don't change course. 4.3° of warming would mean $600,000,000,000,000 ($600 trillion) in damages from climate impacts. $600 trillion is double all the wealth that exists in the world today. Our agriculture would probably be about half as bountiful, so the same plot of land would be producing about half as much yield in a world were we'd have at least fifty percent more people to feed. We would have places in the world that could be dealing with six climate natural disasters simultaneously. And as soon as 2050, it's likely that many of the biggest cities in the Middle East and India will be unlivably hot in the summer, so it would be a lethal risk to set foot outside in the summer in places like Calcutta and Delhi. And UN estimates for the number of climate refugees that could be produced just by 2050 - on the conservative end of their estimates - we're dealing with 100,000,000,000 (100 million) climate refugees by 2050.
Rachel Martin: So... there's a lot in there. Let's try to unpack some of what you just laid out. In particular, one hundred million migrants as a result of climate change: How do you deal with that? Because that is in part where we have seen anti-immigrant, populous movements explode across Europe, in the United States... When climate is driving so many people to look for sanctuary in other resource-rich countries, the natural tendency is to say "Yeah, maybe we need to figure out ways to keep them out. Or to at least save our own?"
Wallace-Wells: Yeah, I mean, if you had to imagine a threat large enough to really call in to being a true network of global cooperation, climate change would be it. It's all encompassing. It challenges the lives of everybody, everywhere on the planet. And yet, it's really reaching a crisis point as we're all retreating from our international agreements and commitments. How does these climate impacts transform the relationship between nations and the responsibilities that we feel towards one another? One quite alarming possibility is the one we're seeing today, which is that nations recoil. Another possibility is that we will be kind of called into a kind of brotherhood, sisterhood -- we'll realize that we're all dealing with this threat together, we all bear some responsibility for it, and we should do everything we can collectively to deal with it. But I don't think that's, you know, I don't think that it's a safe bet that we'll end up in that happy place.
Rachel Martin: You've laid out what even you describe as really apocalyptic consequences. How do you deal with the human tendency to curl up in a ball and walk away from the problem? Regular people, when they hear this, they will think, "How can I possibly make a difference in this? I'm not a politician, I'm not a law-maker, I'm not a scientist. And it's depressing to live in this headspace!"
Wallace-Wells: Yeah. No, ah, it's bleak. But I have to say that optimism is really always a matter of perspective. I think many of us has been taught to think about the range of possible outcomes for climate change as between where we are now, or even zero degrees of warming and two degrees of warming. And I know that the range of possible outcomes this century is between two degrees and four degrees of warming. So, how optimistic I am is based as much around four degrees as it is around two. Now, two degrees is hellish enough. I think that it's our best case scenario, and it is truly alarming. If we get to two degrees, one really remarkable paper demonstrated, last year, the air pollution effects alone would kill an additional 150,000,000,000 (one hundred and fifty million) people beyond what the air pollution at 1.5 degrees would cost. That is our - Best. Case. Scenario. So when I talk about being optimistic, I'm talking about a range that starts at a death toll of a hundred and fifty million people, and extends to a world four degrees warmer, where we'd have eventually hundreds of feet of sea level rise, horrible impacts on agriculture and public health -- beyond our comprehension. Now, a lot of people would want to just sort of recoil from even that best case scenario.
Rachel Martin: Yeah, yeah...
Wallace-Wells: I think that's a human impulse. My my own instinct is to say: Every inch of warming makes a difference. Every inch of warming means averting some suffering, or causing more suffering. And that at no point should we give up because, while on the one hand it's already too late to avert anything south of two degrees of warming, it's also never too late to change the course of our warming, and make lives more prosperous and healthier, and safer, and more abundant and happier, going forward. And so we should never, ever stop caring, never give up -- because it is always possible to make a difference. And I think that we will! I do not think that we'll end up at four degrees. I think it's likely we'll end up at two and a half to three degrees by the end of the century. That again, will be to any perspective that we know today, hellish. But if you know what's possible at four degrees or north of four degrees, it counts as an optimistic outcome. And that's where I am.
Rachel Martin: (pause) The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, written by David Wallace-Wells. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Wallace-Wells: Great to be here.
Originally posted to Dreamwidth, were there are
comments. Dreamwidth comments
Wallace-Wells: More than half of all the fossil fuel emissions that we've ever put into the atmosphere have come in the last 25 years. Which means that we've now done more damage to the climate than all of the millennia before and all of the centuries before.
Rachel Martin: Then it's scope:
Wallace-Wells: We were sort of taught that the problem was really about sea level and coastlines. We're starting to see that climate change is really an all-enveloping threat which promises to transform, probably deform, every life lived on the planet in some way.
Rachel Martin: And finally, it's severity:
Wallace-Wells: It was basically considered irresponsible to consider scenarios north of about two degrees of warming. It was called the Threshold of Catastrophe, and no one really wanted to think about it. It turns out that two degrees looks basically like our floor for warming rather than our ceiling. And so we really need to start thinking about what the impacts will be at two and a half, three and even four degrees of warming.
Rachel Martin: I asked him to explain what that kind of warming would look like:
Wallace-Wells: The absolute worse case scenario is that the planet becomes uninhabitable. I think that is vanishingly unlikely on any timescale that it makes sense for us to think about. But the crazy thing is that I don't think you need to look at worse case scenarios.
Rachel Martin: Right!
Wallace-Wells: So, end of the century, the UN says that we're going to be at 4.3° of warming if we don't change course. 4.3° of warming would mean $600,000,000,000,000 ($600 trillion) in damages from climate impacts. $600 trillion is double all the wealth that exists in the world today. Our agriculture would probably be about half as bountiful, so the same plot of land would be producing about half as much yield in a world were we'd have at least fifty percent more people to feed. We would have places in the world that could be dealing with six climate natural disasters simultaneously. And as soon as 2050, it's likely that many of the biggest cities in the Middle East and India will be unlivably hot in the summer, so it would be a lethal risk to set foot outside in the summer in places like Calcutta and Delhi. And UN estimates for the number of climate refugees that could be produced just by 2050 - on the conservative end of their estimates - we're dealing with 100,000,000,000 (100 million) climate refugees by 2050.
Rachel Martin: So... there's a lot in there. Let's try to unpack some of what you just laid out. In particular, one hundred million migrants as a result of climate change: How do you deal with that? Because that is in part where we have seen anti-immigrant, populous movements explode across Europe, in the United States... When climate is driving so many people to look for sanctuary in other resource-rich countries, the natural tendency is to say "Yeah, maybe we need to figure out ways to keep them out. Or to at least save our own?"
Wallace-Wells: Yeah, I mean, if you had to imagine a threat large enough to really call in to being a true network of global cooperation, climate change would be it. It's all encompassing. It challenges the lives of everybody, everywhere on the planet. And yet, it's really reaching a crisis point as we're all retreating from our international agreements and commitments. How does these climate impacts transform the relationship between nations and the responsibilities that we feel towards one another? One quite alarming possibility is the one we're seeing today, which is that nations recoil. Another possibility is that we will be kind of called into a kind of brotherhood, sisterhood -- we'll realize that we're all dealing with this threat together, we all bear some responsibility for it, and we should do everything we can collectively to deal with it. But I don't think that's, you know, I don't think that it's a safe bet that we'll end up in that happy place.
Rachel Martin: You've laid out what even you describe as really apocalyptic consequences. How do you deal with the human tendency to curl up in a ball and walk away from the problem? Regular people, when they hear this, they will think, "How can I possibly make a difference in this? I'm not a politician, I'm not a law-maker, I'm not a scientist. And it's depressing to live in this headspace!"
Wallace-Wells: Yeah. No, ah, it's bleak. But I have to say that optimism is really always a matter of perspective. I think many of us has been taught to think about the range of possible outcomes for climate change as between where we are now, or even zero degrees of warming and two degrees of warming. And I know that the range of possible outcomes this century is between two degrees and four degrees of warming. So, how optimistic I am is based as much around four degrees as it is around two. Now, two degrees is hellish enough. I think that it's our best case scenario, and it is truly alarming. If we get to two degrees, one really remarkable paper demonstrated, last year, the air pollution effects alone would kill an additional 150,000,000,000 (one hundred and fifty million) people beyond what the air pollution at 1.5 degrees would cost. That is our - Best. Case. Scenario. So when I talk about being optimistic, I'm talking about a range that starts at a death toll of a hundred and fifty million people, and extends to a world four degrees warmer, where we'd have eventually hundreds of feet of sea level rise, horrible impacts on agriculture and public health -- beyond our comprehension. Now, a lot of people would want to just sort of recoil from even that best case scenario.
Rachel Martin: Yeah, yeah...
Wallace-Wells: I think that's a human impulse. My my own instinct is to say: Every inch of warming makes a difference. Every inch of warming means averting some suffering, or causing more suffering. And that at no point should we give up because, while on the one hand it's already too late to avert anything south of two degrees of warming, it's also never too late to change the course of our warming, and make lives more prosperous and healthier, and safer, and more abundant and happier, going forward. And so we should never, ever stop caring, never give up -- because it is always possible to make a difference. And I think that we will! I do not think that we'll end up at four degrees. I think it's likely we'll end up at two and a half to three degrees by the end of the century. That again, will be to any perspective that we know today, hellish. But if you know what's possible at four degrees or north of four degrees, it counts as an optimistic outcome. And that's where I am.
Rachel Martin: (pause) The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, written by David Wallace-Wells. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Wallace-Wells: Great to be here.
Originally posted to Dreamwidth, were there are
comments. Dreamwidth comments