David Wallace Wells: It’s Time to Panic About Climate Change

His new book, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” is a distressing read.

Craig Barritt /Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Today’s guest on the Mother Jones Podcast is David Wallace Wells, a deputy editor at New York magazine, and author of a vividly distressing new book about the all-encompassing perils of climate change titled The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.

With every full-throated warning, Wallace Wells fully embraces the notion that eloquent targeted fear can shake the public into action. He also presents a gripping argument that scientists and others charged with sounding the alarm have historically been far too timid for fear of being branded “alarmist” or dismissed as leftists. We should have begun to panic long ago, Wallace Wells argues. 

So now what?

Host Jamilah King helps us navigate where we go from here—listen in:

You can subscribe to the Mother Jones Podcast using any of the following services:

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate