David Wallace-Wells – Are we creating an ‘Uninhabitable Earth’?

In this first episode of a new season of Planet A, Dan Jørgensen talks with David Wallace-Wells about the multitude of interlinked problems created by climate change. Wallace-Wells, a journalist and deputy editor of New York Magazine, achieved global fame by writing the long-form essay “The Uninhabitable Earth” in 2017. The essay laid out – in excruciating detail – just how dire the climate crisis is for the prospects of human civilization. Wallace-Wells went beyond the traditional portrayals of rising sea levels and extreme weather events, by focusing on how it also affects food security, access to freshwater, spread of communicable disease and armed conflict.In 2019, David Wallace-Wells expanded on the article and wrote a book with the same title that reached the number one spot on the New York Times Bestseller List.  On the podcast, Jørgensen and Wallace-Wells discuss how the media’s coverage of climate change has been misleading on three counts: 1) speed, 2) scope and 3) severity. Furthermore, Wallace-Wells describes not only the range of possibilities for the destruction of our physical world, but also puts the spotlight on how climate change will affect us as human beings. However, Wallace-Wells warns against taking a fatalistic view and points to the rapid development of renewable energy as a cause for optimism.