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Part II, Chapter 4: Wildfire
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Uninhabitable Earth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cascades, Systems Crises, and Interconnectedness
Human Responsibility and the Natural World
Optimism and Action vs. Despair and Nihilism
The Effects of Climate Change on Humanity
Summary
Analysis
The natural disasters to come will soon become so frequent and so normalized that humanity will simply refer to raging hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, floods, and droughts as “weather.” History is now happening all at once: the seeds of these disasters were sown long ago. The drastic changes in weather of the last several years—global heat waves, “500,000-year” floods, and wildfires in the Arctic Circle—will all seem normal by 2040. The unthinkable will soon become the banal.
In this passage, the book outlines one of the most dangerous consequences of warming’s steady escalation: humanity has become desensitized to just how bizarre and catastrophic our natural disasters are. This pattern, the book suggests, will only continue to worsen as the weather does—and unless humanity acknowledges that these kinds of weather events are anything but normal, there will be no urgency behind our fight against climate change.
Themes
Because climate chaos unfolds unevenly, some regions will experience more drastic, sudden changes than others. New categories will need to be invented for hurricanes, and regions that suffer from wealthier countries’ indifference to climate change will need to be prioritized. Humanity has no adequate defenses against the superstorms like Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Irma that threaten to upend our present categories for sorting natural disasters.
One of climate change’s many invisible consequences is an increasing disparity of wealth and privilege. While well-off (or luckily positioned) countries don’t see the worst of climate change on a day-to-day basis, vulnerable countries and territories like Puerto Rico, Bangladesh, and Indonesia will suffer the most drastic changes the most quickly. It will be easy for some people to ignore climate change while others will have to reckon with its deadly fallout almost constantly.
Themes
The globe will be more connected than ever, as a warming Arctic creates intense blizzards in the northern latitudes while America’s “tornado alley” shifts miles each year, creating longer paths for cyclones. These are not “acts of God” any longer, but the all-too-explicable effects of climate change.
The warming atmosphere is literally rearranging our current weather patterns. This means that even those who believe they’re immune to the effects of certain weather events by virtue of their location will soon find themselves vulnerable to unprecedented disasters.
Themes
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Storm damages from tornadoes, hurricanes, and wind storms will produce other kinds of cascades: wastewater, toxic gas releases, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Communities will be devastated so often and so quickly that there won’t be time to rebuild between weather events. Eventually, those fleeing climate disasters may not even be able to find high enough ground or fortified-enough cities in which to remake their lives.
The costs of rebuilding, the logistical planning needed to shelter refugees, and the ever-mounting unpredictability of these extreme weather events means that soon, many parts of the planet may be battered beyond repair. The social, financial, and political toll this will take will be enormous—and as weather redraws the lines of our habitable zones, we will have to redraw the lines of our society.
Themes
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