David Wallace-Wells

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.

Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman A Waterstones Paperback of the Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019 Longlisted for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award 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.

#1NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *; ';The Uninhabitable Earthhits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.'Andrew Solomon, author ofThe Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New Yorker*;The New York Times Book Review*;Time*; NPR *;The Economist*; The Paris Review *;Toronto Star*;GQ*;The Times Literary Supplement*; The New York Public Library*;Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much 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 possiblefood shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An ';epoch-defining book' (The Guardian) and ';this generation's Silent Spring' (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earthis both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through itthe ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generationtoday's. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD ';The Uninhabitable Earthis the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.'Farhad Manjoo,The New York Times ';Riveting. . . .Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells's outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.'The Economist ';Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ';eerily banal language of climatology' in favor of lush, rolling prose.'Jennifer Szalai,The New York Times ';The book has potential to be this generation'sSilent Spring.'The Washington Post ';The Uninhabitable Earth,which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.'Alan Weisman,The New York Review of Books

Mi vár ránk a Földön az elkövetkezendő harminc évben és utána? Aki a globális felmelegedéssel kapcsolatban elsősorban a tengerszint emelkedése miatt aggódik, az épp csak a felszínét kapargatja a lehetséges borzalmaknak. Mert a felszín alatt élelmiszerhiány, menekültválság, klímaháború és gazdasági hanyatlás rejlik. Vagyis rosszabb, sokkal rosszabb a helyzet, mint gondolnánk. A Lakhatatlan Föld „korszakalkotó mű” (The Guardian), egyszerre vázlat a közeljövőről és elmélkedés azon, vajon milyennek látják majd ezt a jövőt azok, akik átélik: hogyan változtatja meg a felmelegedés a világpolitikát, a technológia és a természet jelentőségét, a kapitalizmus fenntarthatóságát és az emberi haladás irányát. A Lakhatatlan Föld szenvedélyes felhívás a cselekvésre. Most ugyanis, hogy a világ egyetlen lépésre van a valódi katasztrófától, ideje cselekednünk. Mert a felelősség a miénk. „A Lakhatatlan Föld aprólékosan dokumentált, ökölbe szorított kézzel megtett utazás a melegedő bolygónkra veselkedő veszélyek között.”

Snad nejzrádnější stránkou klimatické krize je její nenápadnost a zdánlivá pomalost. Roční období se střídají, moře zůstává na svém místě, někdy prší méně, někdy více. To jen v médiích se míhá kaleidoskop apokalypsy: tající permafrost, hořící lesy, ubývající ledovce, města bez vody. Oteplování planety se z hlediska každodenního života zdá být nahodilým označením nespojitých katastrof.