Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells, Marcus Moench and Navroz K. Dubash in conversation with Prem Jha

“It is, I promise, worse than you think.” These were the opening words of the article that went viral, prompting David Wallace-Wells to expand it into his book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. “When most people think about climate change, they tend to think about the future, but this is something happening in the present tense,” he stated. In keeping with the climate emergency emphasis in this year’s ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, this session brought together a panel of environmentalists to share their thoughts on how we can move forward in dealing and living with the level of climate change our planet faces today.

Knowing the severity of the current pace and scale of climate change, how can we best frame the narrative around this emergency to elicit the most proactive response in governments and their citizens alike? This was one of the key themes that the panel grappled with. For David Wallace-Wells, on a personal level, his interest in the issue came from a place of fear. Given that his Uninhabitable Earth article instantly went viral, there certainly seems to be some merit in the doomsday narrative that he adopts. Prem Jha expressed that the doom and gloom portrayal of climate change can sometimes do “more harm than good”, forcing people into a state of apathy. Overall, all speakers agreed on the necessity to communicate the urgency of the crisis, since it will “shake the foundations of every aspect of modern life,” Wallace-Wells warned.

Another contentious topic of the discussion was the approach to climate change in countries where development is a priority. Navroz Dubash stressed that countries like India won’t be able to meet their development needs if they follow their current trends that are focused on development at all cost. Marcus Moench added that countries following a growth-oriented path in the face of climate change is like “trying to put rubber stoppers on the chairs of the Titanic so they don’t scratch the deck while they go down”. Development must be viewed through the low-carbon lens in the context of a warming world. But as awareness has grown, so has the defensive pushback from countries like India, Dubash said. Moench put it more bluntly, saying that “Politicians don’t move where they see the light, but where they feel the heat.”