한국국제교류재단

‘The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming’
David Wallace-Wells, 2019
Korean translation by Kim Jae-gyeong, Chusubat, 2020

If the axis of prosperity was once fossil fuels, climate change will be the threshold of its demise, scientists say. As year after year passes, solving the problem of climate change remains in the realm of the inexplicable. In the years 2019, 2020, and 2021, we have seen frequent international news reports of heat and typhoons that use such superlatives as, “for the first time in 500 years” or, “unprecedented in the past 600 years.” In the process, we have learned to feel a familiar powerlessness.

We often imagine that we can use science and technology, as featured in various futuristic media, to reverse the situation and survive the disaster in the blink of an eye, unlike other species. However, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming flatly rejects this possibility, stating that while climate change is occurring disturbingly faster than we had predicted, science and technology advance extremely slowly. Such imagined futures are nothing but an ambiguous allegory that hides what should be spoken about and hinders a clear look at the problem.

On the basis of his numerous columns, author David Wallace-Wells presents objective indicators and data showing the effects of climate change to awaken readers’ sense of reality, which many of us have put aside in a hidden corner of our unconsciousness. The Digital Revolution should have improved humanity’s productivity, but even industrialized countries failed to achieve outstanding growth in this area, he points out. He also talks provocatively, sometimes using witty and figurative expressions, about the energy revolution that may occur in some 400 years and Bitcoin’s carbon dioxide emissions.

The book says that climate change will not devastate our lives with a bang, like the Great Depression; rather, it will destroy every aspect of them quietly and definitely, triggering a terrifying chain reaction of humanitarian challenges as the return of olden-day epidemics, multiplying conflicts, and 100 million climate refugees, which undermine such systems as capitalism that run throughout the world.

While enumerating the reasons behind this bleak forecast, the book makes its message clear, stating that the unfathomable future that stretches out in front of us is formed by nothing other than our choices. The face of climate change is human, not God’s, and we need to understand this unstable system of our own making and think about how to face it. Our sense of powerlessness does not mean we have been abandoned; instead it is an expression of protest and a feeling of guilt that means the situation still depends on us. Therefore, the book consoles readers and says that we need to use these feelings as fuel in internalizing the problems and continue living bravely.

Today, the predictable poverty, losses, and disasters are clearly visible in news reports, leaving hope in Pandora’s Box, but the book continues to ask its readers both what is left for us and what it is that ought to be left. The word “still” embodies possibility, and we “still” have a future of choices ahead of us. I recommend this book because it is useful for pondering and making decisions about the future.

2050 The Uninhabitable EarthLet’s Go to the Moonclimate changescience and technology