The Future Earth by Eric Holthaus

The Future Earth

by Eric Holthaus

The first hopeful book about climate change, The Future Earth shows readers how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades.

The basics of climate science are easy. We know it is entirely human-caused. Which means its solutions will be similarly human-led. In The Future Earth, leading climate change advocate and weather-related journalist Eric Holthaus ("the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology"-Rolling Stone) offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists, biologists, economists, and climate change activists, it shows what the world could look like if we implemented radical solutions on the scale of the crises we face.

  • What could happen if we reduced carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next decade?
  • What could living in a city look like in 2030?
  • How could the world operate in 2040, if the proposed Green New Deal created a 100 percent net carbon-free economy in the United States?

This is the book for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the current state of our environment. Hopeful and prophetic, The Future Earth invites us to imagine how we can reverse the effects of climate change in our own lifetime and encourages us to enter a deeper relationship with the earth as conscientious stewards and to re-affirm our commitment to one another in our shared humanity.

Reviewed by HekArtemis on

3 of 5 stars

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3.5 stars. Mostly it's quite interesting with some interesting ideas. But, it's also annoyingly US-centric in many ways - like sure, it makes absolute sense that several places in the world will just randomly choose to become new states of the US because of... reasons? Lol.

It's also very badly optimistic in a not realistic way. The author makes some pretty big assumptions and jumps in human altruism and togetherness that just make no sense when you actually understand anything about humanity - and especially after seeing people try to kill each other over toilet paper.

The start of the future-imagining section was also pretty odd as it begins with 2020. And we all know what happens in 2020. Hell basically. So the very start of his imagining is waaaay off base and as such kind of ruins the whole thing. But the weirdest part is that he actually does mention corona, and this book was published in June.... so obviously it was published during lockdown. Now I don't know how long it took from finishing writing for this to be published, but since he mentions corona a single time that means he knew about it while writing the book. It was in reference to Asia though, so perhaps he wrote this at the very start of 2020 when it was only in Asia and he assumed it would only be an Asian thing. Which, well, your future seeing abilities are called into question now mate. Not sure how seriously we can take any of the rest of it.

Maybe that seems a bit mean of me, but it's true. When the very beginning of his future imagining is so wrong it is hard to see the progression as being possible. Especially with what we have learned during 2020. Like his 2020 section included millions of people gathering together in climate protests. Well there were big protests in 2020, we can say that, but they weren't about climate change. Which then makes a lot of his talk about ending racism a bit, erm. Well. That said, his prediction about lower rates of air travel have started coming true.

I don't know. There was a lot of good stuff in here, personally I particularly enjoyed all mentions of a world with different transportation modes and cities and towns built for people instead cars. I have really been getting quite annoyed with how much our towns and cities just aren't built for people, which is weird when it's people who live in these places. But there was also a lot of kumbaya-ing going on too. I'm not sure how helpful that really is.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 29 October, 2020: Finished reading
  • 29 October, 2020: Reviewed