“It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming 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.”
The first two sentences of David Wallace-Wells’ “The Uninhabitable Earth” is clearly terrifying and abrupt, yet it is true. We need to face the facts of where we currently stand on the topic of climate change and the actions that should have already been taken. This reading illustrates the unimaginable and numerous effects of climate change that are bound to happen, if they haven’t already done so. Wallace-Wells interestingly points out that one of our failures is having too much of an imagination filled with ideal beliefs about the future. We should start thinking realistically about how to counter the effects of climate change and recognize the time limit that exists.
Wallace-Wells continues to describe the impact of climate change on the warming of the earth: “In a six-degree-warmer world, the Earth’s ecosystem will boil with so many natural disasters that we will just start calling them “weather”.” This quote shockingly puts into words the severity of the situation. It made me reflect about the simulation we did in class that allowed us to think about potential solutions for decreasing the temperature of the planet. Similarly, the IPCC summary report allowed me to think about it also because of how much more beneficial it would be for us to stop at 1.5°C, instead of 2°C. This definitely seems very difficult given the circumstances that we are under right now. As the report and Hayhoe describe, we would need to greatly increase our efforts of changes in lifestyle choices and reduction efforts. We need to remind ourselves of the impacts that are highly likely.
Climate Crew 