Advertisement

David Wallace-Wells on why going vegetarian won't help the environment and how to stay positive

David Wallace-Wells' (L) book on climate change was an instant bestseller: AP
David Wallace-Wells' (L) book on climate change was an instant bestseller: AP

American journalist David Wallace-Wells never imagined he’d become one of the foremost lobbyists for climate change.

The accidental activist shot to fame after he wrote an essay in New York Magazine in July 2017. His 7,000- word article, The Uninhabitable Earth, was based on dozens of interviews with scientists, many of them off the record, who described the consequences of global warming as being even more serious than was previously imagined, but had felt compelled to censor their opinions. It went viral and was read by seven million people within 24 hours, a record high for the magazine (surpassed only by an extract from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury).

“I was shocked at the impact it had. It sparked a huge conversation, most of it positive, but there was a minority of scientists and activists who felt it was irresponsible fearmongering and took issue with some of the science, so we published a fully annotated version to show where everything had come from.”

This quickly led to a six-figure book deal, which allowed Wallace-Wells to expand his arguments, and when the book bearing the same name as the article came out in February, it became an instant bestseller. “Just a few years ago it was still possible to talk about climate change as something that was going to happen. Now we know that it is happening”.

image
  • Read more

The chilling reality of how Earth will soon be too hot to handle

His book, which opens with the line, ‘It’s worse, much worse, than you think,’ outlines the gruesome impact, already upon us and with far worse to come, of rising sea levels, ocean acidification, eroding coastlines, extreme weather, reduced agricultural yields, increased global conflict, droughts, famines, mass migration, the release of deadly bacteria from melting permafrost, reduced economic growth, declines in cognitive performance and more. It’s not cheerful. “No matter where or who you are, or how much money you have, this is not an escapable threat,” he says. “There’ll be parts of the world hit more intensely than others, but everyone will be affected.”

And whereas a 2C rise was once considered the worst-case scenario — the 2016 Paris Agreement’s stated goal was to limit the increase to 1.5C — it’s now beginning to look like a best. “In the UK, river flooding is going to get worse. In London there are issues with car exhaust and we know that children who live near major motorways suffer declines in development. Small-particulate pollution affects rates of autism, ADHD and schizophrenia. It has a huge public health impact that has been underemphasised.”

Even our current political crisis can be laid partly at the door of climate change, he thinks. “British politics have been totally scrambled by the refugee crisis, but migration is going to have an even bigger impact as major cities in South Asia and the Middle East are expected to become literally unliveably hot. The UN expects that by 2050 there will be at least 200 million climate refugees, or maybe more. The Syrian refugee crisis sent a million people to Europe, so we’ll be looking at something 100 times bigger than that. You’re talking about whole civilisations.”

image

Wallace-Wells, 37, lives in New York (where he’s deputy editor of New York Magazine) and has flown to London to publicise the paperback edition of his book. He has already asserted that for every plane ticket from New York to London, another three square metres of Arctic ice melts. So is he ashamed of his own carbon footprint? “I do feel more guilt about flying and have been trying to fly less, although it’s been a weird year, and I’ve been travelling more than normal,” he concedes. “But while shame is useful, we should be using it to target people in the fossil-fuel business who are behaving much more shamefully than individuals committed to reducing climate change who may not be honouring their commitment perfectly in their own lives.”

Nor does he have much truck with vegetarianism. “Animal agriculture — all animals, not just red meat — accounts for 15 per cent of carbon emissions. If we could reduce that by 10 per cent we’d be talking about a 1.5% decrease globally, which is significant but…” You can see his point. “And while lab-grown meat has no carbon footprint it has other health problems. There are ways of raising meat without carbon; feeding cattle on seaweed cuts their methane emissions by 95 per cent.”

The problem, he thinks, lies in the idea that individuals can and should make their mark through what they consume, when it’s a relative drop in the ocean. He talks positively about the new carbon-munching technologies and switching more fully from “dirty” to “clean’” energy, but this will require monumental and expensive changes for everyone, everywhere; and we’re running out of time.

Last year’s carbon emissions were “the highest in the entire history of humanity”, he says, but there has been an important new development. Namely, the arrival of Greta Thunberg and her UK counterpart, Extinction Rebellion, which burst on to the scene last October. Wallace-Wells met Thunberg for the first time a couple of weeks ago. “She’s the Joan of Arc of climate change! She has an army of millions of school children behind her; she has forced the President of the European Commission to commit to spending a quarter of his budget on climate mitigation and she’s been part of the unfolding new politics in the UK. I’m in awe of what she’s achieved.”

Global warning: David Wallace-Wells writes about the Amazon, main, and has met Greta Thunberg (pictured) (Getty Images)
Global warning: David Wallace-Wells writes about the Amazon, main, and has met Greta Thunberg (pictured) (Getty Images)

Increasing news coverage of the growing number of natural disasters, from Hurricane Dorian to the Amazonian rainforest fires, also helps. “The public are much more engaged and radical, which has given rise to these protest movements and is genuinely changing the politics”.

In June, the UK Government passed a law to end Britain’s contribution to global warming by 2050. Wallace-Wells fears that may be too late, but still, “it’s much more ambitious than anything made before and, even if we fail, we’ll get farther along than we were”.

Despite the catastrophising, he’s an optimist at heart, and believes that increasing awareness is having a powerful snowball effect. “The future is unknowable but the main driver is what we do, so if you’re scared by these outcomes, it should be a comfort to know that we’re in control of them. We’re not going to solve this crisis or stop climate change, but we have a much better chance of staying close to 2C of warming than I’d have thought possible even a year ago.”

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells (Penguin, £9.99), buy it here.

Read more

Read more The chilling reality of how Earth will soon be too hot to handle