David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

David Wallace-Wells
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
University at Albany
Moderated by Judith Enck, former EPA administrator and founder of Beyond Plastics.
David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, a #1 New York Times bestseller, published in 2019 and available in a 2023 Young Adult edition in 2023. The book argues that the state of the world, environmentally speaking, 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 possible-food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.” Farhad Manjoo said, “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read,” and Andrew Solomon said it “hits you like a comet.”
​Wallace-Wells is a weekly columnist and staff writer for the New York Times, a national fellow at the New America Foundation, and a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine. He was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review.
In sobering detail, Wallace-Wells lays out the mistakes and inaction of past and current generations that we see negatively affecting all lives today and more importantly how they will inevitably affect the future. But readers will also hear-loud and clear-his impassioned call to action, as he appeals to current and future generations, especially young people. As he states: “the solutions, when we dare to imagine them . . . are indeed motivating, if there is to be any chance of preserving even the hope for a happier future-relatively livable, relatively fulfilling, relatively prosperous, and perhaps more than only relatively just.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Office of Sustainability, UAlbany Environmental Humanities Lab, and the Honors College at UAlbany.

[@BethHolden-yu4we]

Since reading his book several years ago I have considered David Wallace-Wells one of the most important voices on the subject of climate change. But his answer to the question on the value of individual action is a great disappointment. He seems to believe that political action is more valuable. But for us to rely on politicians and large corporations to solve the problem while we continue to live our lives as though we can do nothing about it is childish and self serving and ultimately suicidal. Should we all stop voting because it’s just one out of millions? If we keep buying the product they will keep drilling for it!