The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future

by David Wallace-Wells

Beginning in 2011, about one million Syrian refugees were unleashed on Europe by a civil war inflamed by climate change and drought—and in a very real sense, much of the “populist moment” the entire West is passing through now is the result of panic produced by the shock of those migrants.

Each of us imposes some suffering on our future selves every time we flip on a light switch, buy a plane ticket, or fail to vote.