Spoiler alert: the future

**I admit to being a snob. I manage to control it somewhat but I get extra snobbish when I read a book that requires some thought, some re-reading, some dictionary or knowledge base inquiries. But overall, one that requires time, a resource few people I know—and would recommend a book to—have.

I came from immigrant parents with scant education who yielded me up to the educational establishment of their time like good Catholic wannabe Americans, to educators who applauded me for every micro-fathom of comprehension into the complex, context-rich arguments they exposed me to; which education—even just the fact of it—set me apart from the ignominy of my lower-class origins, indeed, apart and above and OUT of that bland ghetto resting on its prodigious accomplishments. Yes, though I long ago eschewed the theology, I retain that old-time Jesuit hubris, am a snob who instinctively disdains those who cannot, will not, read extended treatises of urgent importance, like "The Uninhabitable Earth," by David Wallace-Wells. I am also a fool, hence, this post.

I fear that most of the educators of Gen-X, abetted by technologists, did not train them to be patient as they faced books layered with information and nuance; in other words, that lifelong they have subsisted on scraps of wisdom from the bumper sticker, the headline, the tweet, the 2x-speed podcast, the mantra—in other words, that their minds have dined mostly on the polished rice (so-called high points) of complex issues sans their hard but sustaining husks—in other words, because they think skimming is enough—in other words, because they don't have the time or inclination for such—in other words, that they will not understand and therefore will not contribute to resisting the ineluctable flaming grindstone that is rolling toward them—in other words, that they will not read the deeply context-rich arguments that stir me, and therefore be themselves stirred. They will make a snap judgment and go on heedless, rushed, preoccupied with vamping into an obsolete future. Even so, for the curious, I've plucked and polished a few grains of rice from the book and strewn them at the end of this screed.

It does not gladden me to know I will not have to endure the consequences of my (and their) generation's ignorance and inaction. Even if I live the vaunted "long" life," I will not suffer as Gen-Xers will, won't have to stand aghast as the foundations of their lives crumble and the superstructures cave.

It should sadden them, too, but more keenly. Because they have kids and grandkids who will have so much to cope with that they may deem themselves unlucky to have survived the catastrophes, even as they adapt to roles in a dusted-off diorama of primitive human history. Life does not necessarily go on, and that could be a good thing.

Review of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. In addition to the engaging urgency of the content, the book is masterfully written. It's not an easy read for those used to the leniencies of something like "ZIP reads," but it's a good workout for the brain, maybe even for one's character. If these tidbits induce anyone to take it on full-strength I will have succeeded. In any case, I will get back to dying my way out of the spoiled future.

Quotes:

• This is not a book about the science of warming; it is about what warming means to the way we live on this planet.
• The majority of the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. 
• The earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a wiping of the fossil record that it functioned as an evolutionary resetmore than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades.
• Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that  killed the dinosaurs involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas.
• A hotter planet is, on net, bad for plant life, which means what is called “forest dieback”—the decline and retreat of jungle basins as big as countries
• the optimists have never, in the half century of climate anxiety we’ve already endured, been right.
• technocratic faith, which is really market faith 
• in the coming decades many of the most punishing climate horrors will indeed hit those least able to respond and recover. This is what is often called the problem of environmental justice; a sharper, less gauzy phrase would be “climate caste system,” environmental apartheid.
• mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue are flying through the streets of Copenhagen and Chicago
• We have all already left behind the narrow window of environmental conditions that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place, but not just evolve—that window has enclosed everything we remember as history, and value as progress, and study as politics. 
• That has been the work of a single generation. The second generation faces a very different task: the project of preserving our collective future, forestalling that devastation and engineering an alternate path. There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology—and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction.
• In folklore and comic books and church pews and movie theaters, stories about the fate of the earth often perversely counsel passivity in their audiences, and perhaps it should not surprise us that the threat of climate change is no different
• Marshall Islands and Miami Beach, each sinking over time into snorkelers’ paradises;
• The project of unplugging the entire industrial world from fossil fuels is intimidating, and must be done in fairly short order—by 2040, many scientists say
• Species individuated over millions of years of evolution but forced together by climate change have begun to mate with one another for the first time, producing a whole new class of hybrid species: the pizzly bear, the coy-wolf. The zoos are already natural history museums
• Because the planet is as big as it is, and as ecologically diverse; because humans have proven themselves an adaptable species, and will likely continue to adapt to outmaneuver a lethal threat; and because the devastating effects of warming will soon become too extreme to ignore, or deny, if they haven’t already; because of all that, it is unlikely that climate change will render the planet truly uninhabitable. But if we do nothing about carbon emissions, if the next thirty years of industrial activity trace the same arc upward as the last thirty years have, whole regions will become unlivable by any standard we have today as soon as the end of this century.