Summary

In the chapter “Dying Oceans,” Wallace-Wells describes how warming will affect the earth’s oceans – which at 70 percent of the earth’s surface constitute, “by an enormous margin, the planet’s predominant environment” (94). Crucial to the global food supply and the maintenance of planetary seasons, the oceans are crucial to life on earth as we have known it, Wallace-Wells writes, adding that oceans also absorb more than a fourth of the carbon presently emitted by humans. Climate change threatens to destabilize these functions through acidification, “coral bleaching,” and anoxification – a process by which the oceans become deprived of oxygen. Another threat, Wallace-Wells writes, is the slowdown of the “ocean conveyor belt,” by which the planet regulates regional temperatures.

In the chapter “Unbreathable Air,” Wallace-Wells enumerates the health risks posed to humans by emissions-polluted air. “The public health damage is indiscriminate, touching nearly every...