The Uninhabitable Earth

This article analyzes how David Wallace-Wells uses logic, credibility, and emotional appeals in The Uninhabitable Earth to communicate the urgency of climate change and its potentially devastating consequences. Through scientific evidence, historical comparisons, and vivid projections of the planet’s future, it explores how literature can challenge public complacency, raise environmental awareness, and inspire meaningful action before irreversible damage occurs.

It is safe to say that humanity has officially entered a pivotal period in terms of climate change. Whether you “believe” in the climate crisis or not, the Earth’s rising temperature is no longer a matter of opinion.

Fires are burning on the West Coast, the East Coast is flooding, and we are experiencing some of the most extreme weather phenomena ever documented in Earth's history. Climate conspiracists and money machines like to turn the other way and attribute the growing crisis to natural occurrences or political agendas. Still, David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth makes it almost impossible to deny that human evolution and capitalism are two of the main factors fueling the crisis.

Many people reported that The Uninhabitable Earth instilled fear and paranoia after reading, showing that society still doesn't take climate change seriously enough.

Rather than discussing the science and history of a warming globe, Wallace-Wells paints a picture of what the Earth may soon look like if humanity continues at the current rate. In doing so, he makes it easier for people who haven’t yet felt the immediate effects of climate change to imagine the catastrophic damage that is yet to come. Unfortunately, once the effects start to become more visible than they already are, it will be too late.

For this reason, The Uninhabitable Earth serves as the perfect piece of literature to appeal to a reader’s sense of logos, ethos, and pathos while giving members of society a glimpse into the future, hoping to incite action and change now.

At the beginning of the novel, Wallace-Wells introduces the problem of climate change by identifying its source. He counters common claims that deny climate change with direct evidence, leaving no room for debate. For example, Wallace-Wells begins the novel by identifying the burning of fossil fuels as one of the most threatening human activities that is altering the natural composition of Earth’s atmosphere. He also addresses counterclaims by providing evidence that greenhouse gases have caused many other mass extinctions throughout history and that the current crisis is no different.

In fact, many people tend to attribute the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the Industrial Revolution and technologies that followed, implying that it is a relatively new issue. Wallace-Wells counters this assumption by detailing five mass extinctions that have already wiped out entire species on Earth, four of which resulted from greenhouse gases that warmed the atmosphere and made the planet uninhabitable for life.

To build a case for how threatening the current climate crisis is, Wallace-Wells explains that society is “adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate...at least ten times faster,” meaning that another mass extinction is on the way (Wallace-Wells). He also explains that “the oceans were a hundred feet higher” and no humans wandered the face of the earth during previous mass extinctions, giving readers insight into how quickly the next one is coming (Wallace-Wells).

Because most people have a hard time grasping the threshold of how serious a one- or two-degree temperature increase is since it sounds small in the grand scheme of things, Wallace-Wells uses historical comparisons to develop a logical argument for his case and make it more comprehensible for the average person.

To appeal to ethos and establish credibility, Wallace-Wells cites statistics and reports from well-recognized associations and initiatives to support his findings. While people might question the accuracy of claims being made by journalist David Wallace-Wells, they are much more likely to trust statistics that have been released by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For this reason, Wallace-Wells supports his argument with numbers from credible organizations, providing evidence for people who cannot grasp the threat of the climate crisis or choose not to acknowledge the danger humanity faces.

For example, Wallace-Wells references the IPCC’s most recent report, which announces that the Earth’s atmosphere is predicted to rise by 3.2 degrees in coming years, even after climate-friendly initiatives are taken into account. He then proceeds to translate this seemingly small number into a measurable consequence by sharing that this fluctuation in the Earth’s temperature “would flood not just Miami and Dhaka but Shanghai and Hong Kong and a hundred other cities around the world” (Wallace-Wells).

By breaking down the threat of climate change into measurable impacts in the foreseeable future, readers feel directly threatened by the effects of the globe’s rising temperature when they realize their hometowns could be wiped out, which brings me to the next appeal of pathos.

Throughout The Uninhabitable Earth, Wallace-Wells does an impeccable job of appealing to his audience members’ emotions using pathos. More specifically, he illustrates the potential effects of climate change that the average person may not be thinking about, but will creep up on society sooner than we can imagine.

In addition to referencing the flooding of major cities and hurricanes that have already repeatedly destroyed areas like Houston and Ireland, he also draws attention to heat waves that reached record temperatures in Oman and killed 54 people in Canada, giving a sense of urgency to the matter.

He also draws attention to “a green Sahara and the planet’s tropical forests transformed into fire-dominated Savanna,” which paints a vivid image in the minds of those who are not living in these geographical areas, which are already reaping the effects of the heat crisis (Wallace-Wells).

As discussed previously, many individuals have the luxury of overlooking or ignoring the oncoming consequences of climate change if they are not residing in a place that is already threatened by the effects. Fortunately, Wallace-Wells uses temperature increments to explain what could happen in heavily populated regions of the world at each level of rise in temperature.

For example, he says a two-degree rise would cause ice sheets to collapse, which is already happening, and at three degrees, Central Europe, the Caribbean, and North Africa could face droughts lasting over a year, along with wildfires. He also appeals to both emotions and logic by defining these consequences in terms of monetary value, equating to over $600 trillion, as well as personal damage, which would mean entire cities burned down and limited access to clean water; ultimately causing much of humanity to die off. 

These detailed explanations of the future account for part of the reason that many people referred to The Uninhabitable Earth as a dystopian nightmare, but the reality is that many of us will not ever take our contributions to the climate crisis into account until we see these effects taking place in our own lives, at which point it will be too late.

Wallace-Wells also argues that much of the damage already done is irreversible, or will take hundreds of thousands of years to reverse. He goes as far as saying that the climate crisis “will outrun all of us,” which doesn’t provide a very hopeful outlook for humanity (Wallace-Wells). Unfortunately, our ignorance over the past few centuries has blinded society to the long-term effects of our daily carbon footprints and investments in corporations that quite literally fuel the carbon emissions that are destroying the Earth’s atmosphere.

While there is only so much we can do at this point, The Uninhabitable Earth serves as the desperate wake-up call many of us need to make more extensive efforts to preserve the future of the planet and humanity.

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References

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. Tim Duggan Books, 2020.