Change 'How and How Fast'?

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Review by Bill Doughty

How and how fast humans move to confront climate change is at the core of "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming" by David Wallace-Wells (Tim Duggan Books, Crown Publishing Group; 2019).

The Aedes Aegypi mosquito can carry the Zika virus. (CDC/James Gathany)

Among the threats of a continually warming planet are disease hot zones and pandemics:

"There are now, trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years –– in some cases, since before humans were around to encounter them. Which means our immune systems would have no idea how to fight back when those prehistoric plagues emerge from the ice. Already, in laboratories, several microbes have been reanimated..."

The author describes reanimation of bacteria (and a worm) from tens of thousands of years ago, even some microorganisms from millions of years ago. He shows the connection between a warming world and increasing Zika, Lyme disease, malaria, and yellow fever.

Written before Covid-19 was discovered outside of China, "The Uninhabitable Earth" warns of "plagues that climate change will confront us with for the very first time –– a whole new universe of diseases humans have never before known to even worry about ... Scientists guess the planet could harbor more than a million yet-to-be-discovered viruses. Bacteria are even trickier..."

Sunset in southern California during fires, Oct. 23, 2007. CA National Guard.

Wallace-Wells offers the usual dystopian menu of threats: famine, rising ocean levels, floods, unbreathable air, economic collapse, mass extinctions, more destructive storms, greater displacement and migration, and growing conflicts and war.

Countries at risk for conflicts and/or civil war, according to researchers, are Haiti, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Cambodia, and Guatemala.
Climate change represents a growing threat to the U.S. military –– particularly for the Navy –– as water levels rise at some bases and Arctic melting opens new pathways to potential conflict. Some rivals and competitors are taking advantage of the situation even as free nations insist on honoring treaties and freedom of navigation.

"Given the right war-gaming cast of mind, it is also possible to see the aggressive Chinese construction activity in the South China Sea, where whole new artificial islands have been erected for military use, as a kind of dry run, so to speak, for life as a superpower in a flooded world. The strategic opportunity is clear, with so many of the existing footholds –– like all those low-lying islands the United States once used to stepping-stone its own empire across the Pacific –– expected to disappear by the end of the century, if not before. The Marshall Islands archipelago, for instance, seized by the U.S. during World War II, could be rendered uninhabitable by sea-level rise as soon as midcentury, the U.S. Geological Society has warns; its islands will be underwater even if we meet the Paris goals."

Ships and submarines from the Republic of Singapore Navy and U.S. Navy gather in formation in the South China Sea July 21, 2015 during the underway phase of Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Singapore 2015. CARAT is an annual, bilateral exercise series with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and the armed forces of nine partner nations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joe Bishop/Released)

China could be capitalizing on the changing environment at the same time that it may be slow-walking a green revolution, yet "it does hold nearly all the cards." How –– and how fast –– China will go greener becomes the question:

"How and how fast China manages it own transition from industrial to postindustrial economy, how and how fast it 'greens' the industry that remains, how and how fast it remodels agricultural practices and diet, how and how fast it steers the consumer preferences of its booming middle and upper classes away from carbon intensity –– these are not the only things that will determine the climate shape of the twenty-first century. The courses taken by India and the rest of South Asia, Nigeria and rest of sub-Saharan Africa, matter enormously. But China is, at present, the largest of those nations, and by far the wealthiest and most powerful. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, the country has already positioned itself as a major provider, in some cases the major provider, of the infrastructure of industry, energy, and transportation in much of the rest of the developing world. And it is relatively easy to imagine, at the end of a Chinese century, an intuitive global consensus solidifying –– that the country with the world's largest economy (therefore most responsible for the energy output of the planet) and the most people (therefore most responsible for the public health and well-being of humanity) should have something more than narrowly national powers over the climate policy of the rest of the 'community of nations,' who would fall into line behind it."

Global warming, like a pandemic, does not respect walls or borders.

"No human has ever lived on a planet as hot as this one; it will get hotter," Wallace-Wells writes.

Unless the human race as a community of nations faces the threat, the world will cross a tipping point. Already, 96 percent of the world's mammals by weight are either humans or domesticated animals (livestock or pets); only 4 percent are still wild. We see a mass die-off of bees from the world's ecosystem. A dead honeybee is featured on the cover of "The Uninhabitable Earth."

"The arrival of this scale of climate suffering in the modern West will be one of the great and terrible stories of the coming decades," Wallace-Wells says, describing the "Anthropocene" era. "There, at least, we've long thought that modernity had paved over nature, completely, factory by factory and strip mall by strip mall."

Great minds have identified the threats and outlined solutions. Here's what we need to do as individuals and nations: control population, reduce fossil fuels including with a carbon tax, incentivize use of green technologies, phase out dirty energy, consider new approaches to agriculture and diet, and invest in carbon capture. Although the Navy has embraced a need go green –– seeing clearly the threats of climate change and global warming –– some people still reject science, deny reality and resist change.

Green technology: Lance Cpl. James Russell, an electrician with Combat Logistics Battalion 3, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, explains how he and other Marines operate MAGS (Micro Auto Gasification System) at Pohakuloa Training Area, Hawaii, Jan 25, 2013. The system was tested as a waste disposal solution during Lava Viper, a Marine Corps field training exercise. Processing about 50 pounds of solid waste per hour, MAGS is capable of handling the daily waste disposal needs of approximately 1,000 troops, converting 95 percent of the waste to gas, which is then used to fuel the process. (Photo by Cpl. Ben Eberle)

Wallace-Wells presents a wealth of information on many levels and refers to an enlightened group of authors and thinkers including Albert Einstein, Joseph Conrad, Paul Ehrlich, Jared Diamond, E.O. Wilson, H.G. Wells, Steven Pinker, Bill McKibben, and Yuval Noah Harari.

Harari, author of "Sapiens," explains the resistance to action against climate change because of humans' belief in myths. We often fail to react to gradual threats only when our paradigms are shattered.

An example of this phenomenon –– a sudden shattering of a paradigm –– may be seen in the widespread realization this month that systemic racism still exists in some areas of society and cannot be tolerated.

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As for reclaiming a habitable Earth, will global citizens again rise and come together? In the midst of this pandemic, will we have a similar revelation and awakening regarding the need for global change? To use Wallace-Wells's words: "How and how fast?"