The Uninhabitable Earth

Notes

All science is speculative to some degree, subject to some future reconsideration or revision. But just how speculative varies from science to science, from specialty to specialty, indeed from study to study.

Within climate change research, both the fact of global warming (about 1.1 degrees Celsius since humans first began burning fossil fuels) and its mechanism (the greenhouse gases produced by that burning trap heat radiating upward into the planet’s atmosphere) are, at this point, established beyond any shadow of a doubt. Exactly how that warming will play out, over the next decades and then the next centuries, is less certain, both because we don’t know how quickly humans will drop their addiction to fossil fuels, and because we don’t know precisely how the climate system will recalibrate in response to human perturbation. But the notes that follow are, I hope, a road map to the state of that science, in addition to being a bibliography for this book.

I. Cascades

five mass extinctions: Those are the end-Ordovician, the Late Devonian, the end-Permian, the end-Triassic, and the end-Cretaceous. A very good recent popular account of each can be found in Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).

86 percent of all species: These figures are all estimates, and different studies often come to different conclusions. Some accounts of the end-Permian extinction, for instance, suggest the extinction level is as low as 90 percent, while others are as high as 97 percent. These particular figures come from the Cosmos primer “The Five Big Mass Extinctions,” https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions.

all but the one: Brannen, Ends of the World.

began when carbon warmed: There is some considerable debate about the precise mix of environmental factors (volcanic eruptions, microbial activity, Arctic methane) that brought about the end-Permian extinction, but for a summary of the theory that volcanic activity warmed the planet and the warming released methane that accelerated that warming, see Uwe Brand et al., “Methane Hydrate: Killer Cause of Earth’s Greatest Mass Extinction,” Paleoworld 25, no. 4 (December 2016): pp. 496–507, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palwor.2016.06.002.

at least ten times faster: “Maximum rates of carbon emissions for both the PETM and the end-Permian are about one billion tons of carbon, and right now we’re at ten billion tons of carbon,” the Penn State geoscientist Lee Kump, among the world’s leading experts on mass extinctions, told me. “The duration of both of those events was much longer than fossil-fuel burning will go on, and so the total amount is lower—but not by a factor of ten. By a factor of two or three.”

The rate is one hundred times faster: Jessica Blunden, Derek S. Arndt, and Gail Hartfield, eds., “State of the Climate in 2017,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 99, no. 8 (August 2018), Si–S310, https://doi.org/10.1175/2018BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.

at any point in the last 800,000 years: Rob Moore, “Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Hits Record High Monthly Average,” Scripps Institution of Oceanography, May 2, 2018. As Moore puts it: “Prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, CO₂ levels had fluctuated over the millennia but had never exceeded 300 ppm at any point in the last 800,000 years,” https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2018/05/02/carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-hits-record-high-monthly-average/.

as long as 15 million years: See, for instance, Aradhna K. Tripati, Christopher D. Roberts, and Robert A. Eagle, “Coupling of CO₂ and Ice Sheet Stability over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years,” Science 326, no. 5958 (December 2009): pp. 1394–97. “The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today—and were sustained at those levels—global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today,” Tripati said in the UCLA press release for the study. “The sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland.”

more than a hundred feet higher: Ibid.

more than half of the carbon: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO₂ Emissions” (Oak Ridge, TN, 2017), https://doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2017. Accounts and estimates of historical emissions vary, but according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we have emitted 1578 gigatons of CO₂ from fossil fuels since 1751; since 1989 the total is 820 gigatons.

the figure is about 85 percent: According to Oak Ridge, the total figure since 1946 is 1376 gigatons, or 87 percent of 1578.

Scientists had understood: R. Revelle and H. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO₂ During the Past Decades,” Tellus 9 (1957): pp. 18–27.

passing the threshold of carbon concentration: See, for instance, Nicola Jones, “How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters,” Yale Environment 360, January 26, 2017, https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters.

a monthly average of 411: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “Another Climate Milestone Falls at Mauna Loa Observatory,” June 7, 2018, https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/another-climate-milestone-falls-mauna-loa-observatory.

more than four degrees Celsius of warming: IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers (Geneva, 2014), p. 11, www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/.

would be rendered uninhabitable: Gaia Vince, “How to Survive the Coming Century,” New Scientist, February 25, 2009. Some of this assessment is a bit extreme, but it is incontrovertibly true that warming on that scale will render large parts of those regions brutally inhospitable by any standard we apply today.

a group of Arctic scientists: Alec Luhn and Elle Hunt, “Besieged Russian Scientists Drive Away Polar Bears,” The Guardian, September 14, 2016.

killed by anthrax released: Michaeleen Doucleff, “Anthrax Outbreak in Russia Thought to Be Result of Thawing Permafrost,” NPR, August 3, 2016.

one million Syrian refugees: Phillip Connor, “Most Displaced Syrians Are in the Middle East, and About a Million Are in Europe,” Pew Research, January 29, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/29/where-displaced-syrians-have-resettled.

likely flooding of Bangladesh: “By 2050, it is estimated that one in every seven people in Bangladesh is likely to be displaced by climate change,” Robert Watkins of the United Nations said in a 2015 statement: see Mubashar Hasan, “Bangladesh’s Climate Change Migrants,” ReliefWeb, November 13, 2015.

140 million by 2050: World Bank, Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration (Washington, D.C., 2018), p. xix, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461.

more than a hundred times Europe’s Syrian “crisis”: Connor, “Most Displaced Syrians.” “Nearly 13 million Syrians are displaced after seven years of conflict in their country,” Connor reported.

The U.N. projections are bleaker: Baher Kamal, “Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050,” ReliefWeb, August 21, 2017, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-migrants-might-reach-one-billion-2050.

Two hundred million was the entire: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Estimates of World Population,” www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.

“a billion or more vulnerable”: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, “Sustainability. Stability. Security,” www.unccd.int/sustainability-stability-security.

Fifteen percent of all human experience: Eukaryote, “The Funnel of Human Experience,” LessWrong, October 9, 2018, www.lesswrong.com/posts/SwBEJapZNzWFifLN6/the-funnel-of-human-experience.

another name for that level of warming: “Marshalls Likens Climate Change Migration to Cultural Genocide,” Radio New Zealand, October 6, 2015, www.radionz.co.nz/news/pacific/286139/marshalls-likens-climate-change-migration-to-cultural-genocide.

bell curve of more horrific possibilities: Technically, this is not a bell curve but a distribution curve, because it has a long tail of negative outcomes, rather than a balanced distribution of optimistic and pessimistic scenarios (that is, there are many more worst-case-like outcomes that are possible than best-case-like outcomes).

about 3.2 degrees of warming: Perhaps the best reference for all of the various predictive models is the Climate Action Tracker, which calculates that all of the world’s existing pledges would likely yield global warming of 3.16 degrees Celsius by 2100.

planet’s ice sheets: Alexander Nauels et al., “Linking Sea Level Rise and Socioeconomic Indicators Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways,” Environmental Research Letters 12, no. 11 (October 2017), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa92b6. In 2017, Nauels and his colleagues suggested that warming of merely 1.9 degrees Celsius could push the ice sheets past a tipping point of collapse.

That would eventually flood: The total collapse of the ice sheets would raise sea levels by more than two hundred feet, it is estimated, but a much smaller rise would be necessary to flood these cities. Miami sits six feet above sea level, Dhaka thirty-three feet. Shanghai is at thirteen feet, and parts of Hong Kong are as low as zero feet—which is why, in 2015, the South China Morning Post reported that four degrees of warming could displace 45 million people in those two cities: Li Ching, “Rising Sea Levels Set to Displace 45 Million People in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tianjin If Earth Warms 4 Degrees from Climate Change,” South China Morning Post, November 9, 2015.

several recent studies: Thorsten Mauritsen and Robert Pincus, “Committed Warming Inferred from Observations,” Nature Climate Change, July 31, 2017; Adrian E. Raftery et al., “Less than 2°C Warming by 2100 Unlikely,” Nature Climate Change, July 31, 2017; Hubertus Fischer et al., “Paleoclimate Constraints on the Impact of 2°C Anthropogenic Warming and Beyond,” Nature Geoscience, June 25, 2018.

“century of hell”: Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney, “Scientists Nearly Double Sea Level Rise Projections for 2100, Because of Antarctica,” The Washington Post, March 30, 2016.

underestimating the amount of warming: Alvin Stone, “Global Warming May Be Twice What Climate Models Predict,” UNSW Sydney, July 5, 2018, https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/global-warming-may-be-twice-what-climate-models-predict.

fire-dominated savanna: Fischer, “Paleoclimate Constraints on the Impact.”

“Hothouse Earth”: Will Steffen et al., “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (August 14, 2018).

At two degrees, the ice sheets: Nauels, “Linking Sea Level Rise and Socioeconomic Indicators,” https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa92b6.

400 million more people: Robert McSweeney, “The Impacts of Climate Change at 1.5C, 2C and Beyond,” Carbon Brief, October 4, 2018, https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees.

thirty-two times as many: Ibid.

9 percent more heat-related deaths: Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera et al., “Temperature-Related Mortality Impacts Under and Beyond Paris Agreement Climate Change Scenario,” Climatic Change 150, no. 3–4 (October 2018): pp. 391–402, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2274-3.

eight million more cases of dengue: Felipe J. Colon-Gonzalez et al., “Limiting Global-Mean Temperature Increase to 1.5–2 °C Could Reduce the Incidence and Spatial Spread of Dengue Fever in Latin America,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 24 (June 2018): pp. 6243–48, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718945115.

The last time that was the case: As with all work in paleoclimate, estimates on this point vary, but this summary comes from Howard Lee, “What Happened the Last Time It Was as Warm as It’s Going to Get at the End of This Century,” Ars Technica, June 18, 2018.

“hyperobject”: Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

due for about 4.5 degrees: IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, p. 11, www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/.

As Naomi Oreskes has noted: For instance, in “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?” in Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).

Just running those models: Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman, Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 53–55.

the Nobel laureate William Nordhaus: “If productivity growth is high, global temperature in 2100 is 5.3 °C.” William Nordhaus, “Projections and Uncertainties About Climate Change in an Area of Minimal Climate Policies” (working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016).

humans at the equator: Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber, “An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 21 (May 2010): pp. 9552–55, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913352107.

oceans would eventually swell: Jason Treat et al., “What the World Would Look Like If All the Ice Melted,” National Geographic, September 2013.

two-thirds of the world’s major cities: This is a common shorthand climate scientists use, expressed by Katharine Hayhoe in Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Where Can You Escape the Harshest Effects of Climate Change?” The New York Times, October 20, 2016. “Two-thirds of the world’s biggest cities are within a few feet of sea level,” Hayhoe says.

hardly any land on the planet: If, as David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor theorize, every degree of warming costs 10 to 15 percent of grain yields—with higher temperatures cutting into productivity more than lower ones—eight degrees of global warming will almost entirely eliminate the capacity of the world’s existing grain regions to produce food.

tropical disease would reach northward: As Peter Brannen documents in Ends of the World, the last time the world was even five degrees warmer, what we now know as the Arctic was, in places, tropical.

climate is actually less sensitive: Peter M. Cox et al., “Emergent Constraint on Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity from Global Temperature Variability,” Nature 553 (January 2018): pp. 319–22.

permanent food deficit: Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). This book is a valuable road map to the future of warming.

“Half-Earth”: Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016).

three major hurricanes: Those were Irma, Katia, and Jose.

“500,000-year event”: Tia Ghose, “Hurricane Harvey Caused 500,000-Year Floods in Some Areas,” Live Science, September 11, 2017, www.livescience.com/60378-hurricane-harvey-once-in-500000-year-flood.html.

third such flood: Christopher Ingraham, “Houston Is Experiencing Its Third ‘500-Year’ Flood in Three Years. How Is That Possible?” The Washington Post, August 29, 2017.

an Atlantic hurricane hit Ireland: Hurricane Ophelia, that is.

45 million were flooded: UNICEF, “16 Million Children Affected by Massive Flooding in South Asia, with Millions More at Risk,” September 2, 2017, www.unicef.org/press-releases/16-million-children-affected-massive-flooding-south-asia-millions-more-risk.

“thousand-year flood”: Tom Di Liberto, “Torrential Rains Bring Epic Flash Floods in Maryland in Late May 2018,” NOAA Climate.gov, May 31, 2018, www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/torrential-rains-bring-epic-flash-floods-maryland-late-may-2018.

record heat waves: Jason Samenow, “Red-Hot Planet: All-Time Heat Records Have Been Set All over the World During the Past Week,” The Washington Post, July 5, 2018.

fifty-four died from the heat: Rachel Lau, “Death Toll Rises to 54 as Quebec Heat Wave Ends,” Global News, July 6, 2018, https://globalnews.ca/news/4316878/50-people-now-dead-due-to-sweltering-quebec-heat-wave.

one hundred major wildfires: Jon Herskovitz, “More than 100 Large Wildfires in U.S. as New Blazes Erupt,” Reuters, August 11, 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires/more-than-100-large-wildfires-in-u-s-as-new-blazes-erupt-idUSKBN1KX00B.

4,000 acres in one day: “Holy Fire Burns 4,000 Acres, Forcing Evacuations in Orange County,” Fox 5 San Diego, August 6, 2018, https://fox5sandiego.com/2018/08/06/fast-moving-wildfire-forces-evacuations-in-orange-county/.

300-foot eruption of flames: Kirk Mitchell, “Spring Creek Fire ‘Tsunami’ Sweeps over Subdivision, Raising Home Toll to 251,” Denver Post, July 5, 2018.

1.2 million were evacuated: Elaine Lies, “Hundreds of Thousands Evacuated in Japan as ‘Historic Rain’ Falls; Two Dead,” Reuters, July 6, 2018, https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL4N1U21AH.

the evacuation of 2.45 million: “Two Killed, 2.45 Million Evacuated as Super Typhoon Mangkhut Hits Mainland China,” The Times of India, September 16, 2018, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/super-typhoon-mangkhut-hits-china-over-2-45-million-people-evacuated/articleshow/65830611.cms.

turning the port city of Wilmington: Patricia Sullivan and Katie Zezima, “Florence Has Made Wilmington, N.C., an Island Cut Off from the Rest of the World,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2018.

hog manure and coal ash: Umair Irfan, “Hog Manure Is Spilling Out of Lagoons Because of Hurricane Florence’s Floods,” Vox, September 21, 2018.

the winds of Florence: Joel Burgess, “Tornadoes in the Wake of Florence Twist Through North Carolina,” Asheville Citizen-Times, September 17, 2018.

Kerala was hit: Hydrology Directorate, Government of India, Study Report: Kerala Floods of August 2018 (September 2018), http://cwc.gov.in/main/downloads/KeralaFloodReport/Rev-0.pdf.

Hawaii’s East Island: Josh Hafner, “Remote Hawaiian Island Vanishes Underwater After Hurricane,” USA Today, October 24, 2018.

deadliest fire in its history: Paige St. John et al., “California Fire: What Started as a Tiny Brush Fire Became the State’s Deadliest Wildfire. Here’s How,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2018.

Jerry Brown described: Ruben Vives, Melissa Etehad, and Jaclyn Cosgrove, “Southern California Fire Devastation Is ‘the New Normal,’ Gov. Brown Says,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2017.

“angry beast”: “Wallace Broecker: How to Calm an Angry Beast,” CBC News, November 19, 2008, www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wallace-broecker-how-to-calm-an-angry-beast-1.714719.

the fourth evacuation order: County of Santa Barbara, California, evacuation orders from 2018.

temporary shacks: Michael Schwirtz, “Besieged Rohingya Face ‘Crisis Within the Crisis’: Deadly Floods,” The New York Times, February 13, 2018.

More than a dozen died: Phil Helsel, “Body of Mother Found After California Mudslide; Death Toll Rises to 21,” NBC News, January 20, 2018, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/body-mother-found-after-california-mudslide-death-toll-rises-21-n839546.

1.8 trillion tons of carbon: NASA Science, “Is Arctic Permafrost the ‘Sleeping Giant’ of Climate Change?” NASA, June 24, 2013, https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/24jun_permafrost.

thirty-four times as powerful: Environmental Protection Agency, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Understanding Global Warming Potentials,” www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials.

climate scientists call “feedbacks”: For a good overview, see Lee R. Kump and Michael E. Mann, Dire Predictions: The Visual Guide to the Findings of the IPCC, 2nd ed. (New York: DK, 2015).

human-triggered avalanches: Melanie J. Froude and David N. Petley, “Global Fatal Landslide Occurrence from 2004 to 2016,” Natural Hazards and Earth Systems Sciences 18 (2018): pp. 2161–81, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-2161-2018.

a whole new kind: Bob Berwyn, “Destructive Flood Risk in U.S. West Could Triple If Climate Change Left Unchecked,” Inside Climate News (August 6, 2018), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082018/global-warming-climate-change-floods-california-oroville-dam-scientists.

500,000 poor Latinos: Ellen Wulfhorst, “Overlooked U.S. Border Shantytowns Face Threat of Gathering Storms,” Reuters, June 11, 2018, https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL2N1SO2FZ.

countries with lower GDPs: Andrew D. King and Luke J. Harrington, “The Inequality of Climate Change from 1.5°C to 2°C of Global Warming,” Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 10 (May 2018): pp. 5030–33, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078430.

trees may simply turn brown: Andrea Thompson, “Drought and Climate Change Could Throw Fall Colors Off Schedule,” Scientific American, November 1, 2016.

coffee plants of Latin America: Pablo Imbach et al., “Coupling of Pollination Services and Coffee Suitability Under Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 39 (September 2017): pp. 10438–42, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617940114. The paper was summarized by Yale’s E360 this way: “Latin America could lose up to 90 percent of its coffee-growing land by 2050.”

half of the world’s vertebrate animals: WWF, “Living Planet Report 2018,” Aiming Higher (Gland, Switz.: 2018), p. 18, https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_planet_report_2018.

the flying insect population declined: Caspar Hallman et al., “More Than 75 Percent Decline over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas,” PLOS One 12, no. 10 (October 2017), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809.

delicate dance of flowers and their pollinators: Damian Carrington, “Climate Change Is Disrupting Flower Pollination, Research Shows,” The Guardian, November 6, 2014.

migration patterns of cod: Bob Berwyn, “Fish Species Forecast to Migrate Hundreds of Miles Northward as U.S. Waters Warm,” Inside Climate News, May 16, 2018, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16052018/fish-species-climate-change-migration-pacific-northwest-alaska-atlantic-gulf-maine-cod-pollock.

hibernation patterns of black bears: Kendra Pierre-Louis, “As Winter Warms, Bears Can’t Sleep, and They’re Getting into Trouble,” The New York Times, May 4, 2018.

whole new class of hybrid species: Moises Velaquez-Manoff, “Should You Fear the Pizzly Bear?” The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2014.

desertification of the entire Mediterranean: Joel Guiot and Wolfgang Cramer, “Climate Change: The 2015 Paris Agreement Thresholds and Mediterranean Basin Ecosystems,” Science 354, no. 6311 (October 2016): pp. 463–68, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5015. According to Guiot and Cramer’s calculations, even staying below two degrees of warming would mean much of the region would become, technically at least, desert.

dust from the Sahara: “Sahara Desert Dust Cloud Blankets Greece in Orange Haze,” Sky News, March 26, 2018, https://news.sky.com/story/sahara-desert-dust-cloud-blankets-greece-in-orange-haze-11305011.

for the Nile to be dramatically drained: “How Climate Change Might Affect the Nile,” The Economist, August 3, 2017.

the Rio Sand: Tom Yulsman, “Drought Turns the Rio Grande into the ‘Rio Sand,’ ” Discover, July 15, 2013.

Eight hundred million in South Asia: Muthukumara Mani et al., “South Asia’s Hotspots: Impacts of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards,” World Bank (Washington, D.C., June 2018), p. xi, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/28723/9781464811555.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y.

fossil capitalism: Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (London: Verso, 2016).

about one percentage point of GDP: Solomon Hsiang et al., “Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States,” Science 356, no. 6345 (June 2017): pp. 1362–69, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4369.

$20 trillion richer: Marshall Burke et al., “Large Potential Reduction in Economic Damages Under UN Mitigation Targets,” Nature 557 (May 2018): pp. 549–53, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0071-9.

$551 trillion in damages: R. Warren et al., “Risks Associated with Global Warming of 1.5 or 2C,” Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, May 2018, www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/briefing_note_risks_warren_r1-1.pdf.

total worldwide wealth is today: According to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report 2017, total global wealth that year was $280 trillion.

has not topped 5 percent globally: According to the World Bank, the last time was 1976, when global growth was at 5.355 percent. World Bank, “GDP Growth (Annual %),” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG.

“steady-state economics”: The term was popularized by Herbert Daly, whose anthology Toward a Steady-State Economy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1973) established a contrarian perspective on the history of economic growth that is especially incisive in an age of climate change. (“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.”)

150 million more people: Drew Shindell et al., “Quantified, Localized Health Benefits of Accelerated Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions,” Nature Climate Change 8 (March 2018): pp. 291–95, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0108-y.

IPCC raised the stakes: IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C Above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty (Incheon, Korea, 2018), www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15.

seven million deaths: This is from the World Health Organization’s 2014 assessment, in which air pollution was named as the single biggest health risk in the world: WHO, “Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health (PHE),” www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/en.

whether it’s responsible to have children: For a useful summary of this suddenly pervasive query among Western liberals and a fairly thorough counterargument, see Connor Kilpatrick, “It’s Okay to Have Children,” Jacobin, August 22, 2018.

Paul Hawken has perhaps illustrated: You can find his comprehensive survey of climate solutions (plant-based diets, green roofs, the education of women) in Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (New York: Penguin, 2017).

Fully half of British emissions: This is probably an overestimate, but it comes from “Less In, More Out,” published by the U.K.’s Green Alliance in 2018.

two-thirds of American energy: Anne Stark, “Americans Used More Clean Energy in 2016,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, April 10, 2017, www.llnl.gov/news/americans-used-more-clean-energy-2016.

$5 trillion each year: David Coady et al., “How Large Are Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies?” World Development 91 (March 2017): pp. 11–27, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.10.004.

cost the world $26 trillion: The New Climate Economy, “Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times” (Washington, D.C.: Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, September 2018), p. 8, https://newclimateeconomy.report/2018.

Americans waste a quarter of their food: Zach Conrad et al., “Relationship Between Food Waste, Diet Quality, and Environmental Sustainability,” PLOS One 13, no. 4 (April 2018), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195405.

mining it consumes more electricity: Eric Holthaus, “Bitcoin’s Energy Use Got Studied, and You Libertarian Nerds Look Even Worse than Usual,” Grist, May 17, 2018, https://grist.org/article/bitcoins-energy-use-got-studied-and-you-libertarian-nerds-look-even-worse-than-usual. See also Alex de Vries, “Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem,” Cell 2, no. 5 (May 2018): pp. 801–5, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.04.016.

Seventy percent of the energy: Nicola Jones, “Waste Heat: Innovators Turn to an Overlooked Renewable Resource,” Yale Environment 360, May 29, 2018. “Today, in the United States, most fossil fuel–burning power plants are about 33 percent efficient,” Jones writes, “while combined heat and power (CHP) plants are typically 60 to 80 percent efficient.”

U.S. carbon emissions: The World Bank estimated the 2014 U.S. carbon emissions per capita at 16.49 metric tons per year; the average citizen of the E.U., that year, was responsible for just 6.379 (so the savings would actually be considerably more than 50 percent). World Bank, “CO₂ Emissions (Metric Tons per Capita),” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC.

global emissions would fall by a third: The richest 10 percent of the world are responsible for about half of all emissions, Oxfam calculated in its “Extreme Carbon Inequality” report of December 2015, available at www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf. The average carbon footprint for someone in the global 1 percent, the study found, was 175 times that of someone in the world’s poorest 10 percent.

We have already left behind: Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this is the xkcd web comic “A Timeline of Earth’s Average Temperature,” September 12, 2016, www.xkcd.com/1732.

II. Elements of Chaos

Heat Death

At seven degrees of warming: Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber, “An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 21 (May 2010): pp. 9552–55, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913352107.

after a few hours: Ibid. According to Sherwood and Huber, “Periods of net heat storage can be endured, though only for a few hours, and with ample time needed for recovery.”

eleven or twelve degrees Celsius: Ibid. “With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed,” Sherwood and Huber write. “Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning.”

at just five degrees: Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008), p. 196.

summer labor of any kind: John P. Dunne et al., “Reductions in Labour Capacity from Heat Stress Under Climate Warming,” Nature Climate Change 3 (February 2013): pp. 563–66, https://doi.org/10.1038/NCLIMATE1827.

New York City would be hotter: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 138.

median projection of over four degrees: IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers (Geneva, 2014), p. 11, www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/.

fiftyfold increase: Romm, Climate Change, p. 41.

five warmest summers in Europe: World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided (Washington, D.C., November 2012), p. 13, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/865571468149107611/pdf/NonAsciiFileName0.pdf.

simply working outdoors: IPCC, Climate Change 2014, p. 15, www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/. “By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors.”

cities like Karachi and Kolkata: Tom K. R. Matthews, et al., “Communicating the Deadly Consequences of Global Warming for Human Heat Stress,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 15 (April 2017): pp. 3861–66, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617526114. The authors write, of the 2015 summer, “The extraordinary heat had deadly consequences, with over 3,400 fatalities reported across India and Pakistan alone.”

European heat wave of 2003: World Bank, Turn Down the Heat, p. 37, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/865571468149107611/pdf/NonAsciiFileName0.pdf.

worst weather events in Continental history: William Langewiesche, “How Extreme Heat Could Leave Swaths of the Planet Uninhabitable,” Vanity Fair, August 2017.

a research team led by Ethan Coffel: Ethan Coffel et al., “Temperature and Humidity Based on Projections of a Rapid Rise in Global Heat Stress Exposure During the 21st Century,” Environmental Research Letters 13 (December 2017), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa00e.

the World Bank has estimated: World Bank, Turn Down the Heat, p. 38, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/865571468149107611/pdf/NonAsciiFileName0.pdf.

Indian summer killed 2,500: IFRC, “India: Heat Wave—Information Bulletin No. 01,” June 11, 1998, www.ifrc.org/docs/appeals/rpts98/in002.pdf.

In 2010, 55,000 died: In Moscow, there were 10,000 ambulance calls each day, and many doctors believed that the official death counts understated the true toll.

according to The Wall Street Journal: Craig Nelson and Ghassan Adan, “Iraqis Boil as Power-Grid Failings Exacerbate Heat Wave,” The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2016.

700,000 barrels of oil: Ayhan Demirbas et al., “The Cost Analysis of Electric Power Generation in Saudi Arabia,” Energy Sources, Part B 12, no. 6 (March 2017): pp. 591–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/15567249.2016.1248874.

10 percent of global electricity: International Energy Agency, The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning (Paris, 2018), p. 24, www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/The_Future_of_Cooling.pdf.

triple, or perhaps quadruple: Ibid., p. 3.

700 million AC units: Nihar Shah et al., “Benefits of Leapfrogging to Superefficiency and Low Global Warming Potential Refrigerants in Room Air Conditioning,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (October 2015), p. 18, http://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/lbnl-1003671.pdf.

more than nine billion cooling appliances: University of Birmingham, A Cool World: Defining the Energy Conundrum of Cooling for All (Birmingham, 2018), p. 3, www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-eps/energy/Publications/2018-clean-cold-report.pdf.

hajj will become physically impossible: Jeremy S. Pal and Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, “Future Temperature in Southwest Asia Projected to Exceed a Threshold for Human Adaptability,” Nature Climate Change 6 (2016), pp. 197–200, www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2833.

sugarcane region of El Salvador: Oriana Ramirez-Rubio et al., “An Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease in Central America: An Overview,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 67, no. 1 (September 2012): pp. 1–3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2012-201141.

grew by 1.4 percent: International Energy Agency, Global Energy and CO₂ Status Report, 2017 (Paris, March 2018), p. 1, www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/GECO2017.pdf.

“in range”: See the Climate Action Tracker.

emissions grew by 4 percent: Zach Boren and Harri Lammi, “Dramatic Surge in China Carbon Emissions Signals Climate Danger,” Unearthed, May 30, 2018, https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/05/30/china-co2-carbon-climate-emissions-rise-in-2018.

coal power has nearly doubled: Simon Evans and Rosamund Pearce, “Mapped: The World’s Coal Power Plants,” Carbon Brief, June 5, 2018, www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants. Evans and Pearce estimate 1.061 million megawatts of coal power in 2000 and 1.996 million in 2017.

the Chinese example: Yann Robiou du Pont and Malte Meinshausen, “Warming Assessment of the Bottom-Up Paris Agreement Emissions Pledges,” Nature Communications, November 2018.

“limited realistic potential”: European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, Negative Emission Technologies: What Role in Meeting Paris Agreement Targets? (Halle, Ger., February 2018), p. 1, https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Negative_Carbon/EASAC_Report_on_Negative_Emission_Technologies.pdf.

“magical thinking”: “Why Current Negative-Emissions Strategies Remain ‘Magical Thinking,’ ” Nature, February 21, 2018, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02184-x.

full-scale carbon capture plants: Andy Skuce, “ ‘We’d Have to Finish One New Facility Every Working Day for the Next 70 Years’—Why Carbon Capture Is No Panacea,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 4, 2016, https://thebulletin.org/2016/10/wed-have-to-finish-one-new-facility-every-working-day-for-the-next-70-years-why-carbon-capture-is-no-panacea.

eighteen of them: Global CCS Institute, “Large-Scale CCS Facilities,” www.globalccsinstitute.com/projects/large-scale-ccs-projects.

Asphalt and concrete: Linda Poon, “Street Grids May Make Cities Hotter,” CityLab, April 27, 2018, www.citylab.com/environment/2018/04/street-grids-may-make-cities-hotter/558845.

22 degrees Fahrenheit: Environmental Protection Agency, “Heat Island Effect,” www.epa.gov/heat-islands.

Chicago heat wave of 1995: Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

two-thirds of the global population: “Around 2.5 Billion More People Will Be Living in Cities by 2050, Projects New U.N. Report,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, May 16, 2018, www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-world-urbanization-prospects.html.

that list could grow to 970: Urban Climate Change Research Network, The Future We Don’t Want: How Climate Change Could Impact the World’s Greatest Cities (New York, February 2018), p. 6, https://c40-production-images.s3.amazonaws.com/other_uploads/images/1789_Future_We_Don't_Want_Report_1.4_hi-res_120618.original.pdf.

70,000 workers: Public Citizen, “Extreme Heat and Unprotected Workers: Public Citizen Petitions OSHA to Protect the Millions of Workers Who Labor in Dangerous Temperatures” (Washington, D.C.: July 17, 2018), p. 25, www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/extreme_heat_and_unprotected_workers.pdf.

255,000 are expected: World Health Organization, “Quantitative Risk Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Selected Causes of Death, 2030s and 2050s” (Geneva, 2014), p. 21, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/134014/9789241507691_eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

a third of the world’s population: Camilo Mora et al., “Global Risk of Deadly Heat,” Nature Climate Change 7 (June 2017): pp. 501–6, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3322.

heat death is among: Langewiesche, “How Extreme Heat Could Leave Swaths.”

Hunger

the basic rule of thumb: David S. Battisti and Rosamond L. Naylor, “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat,” Science 323, no. 5911 (January 2009): pp. 240–44.

Some estimates run higher: “The temperature-crop relationship is nonlinear,” Battisti says. “Yields drop off faster for each one degree Celsius temperature increase—so yes, all else being the same, yields would drop off much more than 50 percent.”

eight pounds of grain to produce: Lloyd Alter, “Energy Required to Produce a Pound of Food,” Treehugger, 2010. As Battisti put it in an interview, “Usually this is quoted as ‘it takes 8 to 10 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of beef.’ ”

Globally, grain accounts: Ed Yong, “The Very Hot, Very Hungry Caterpillar,” The Atlantic, August 30, 2018.

two-thirds of all human calories: Chuang Zhao et al., “Temperature Increase Reduces Global Yields of Major Crops in Four Independent Estimates,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 35 (August 2017): pp. 9326–31, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1701762114.

the United Nations estimates: Food and Agriculture Organization, “How to Feed the World in 2050” (Rome, October 2009), p. 2, www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf.

the tropics are already too hot: “In the tropics, the temperature already exceeds the optimate temperature for major grains,” Battisti told me. “Any additional increase in temperature will further reduce yield, even under otherwise optimal conditions.”

at least a fifth of its productivity: Michelle Tigchelaar et al., “Future Warming Increases Probability of Globally Synchronized Maize Production Shocks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 26 (June 2018): pp. 6644–49, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718031115.

thicker leaves are worse: Marlies Kovenock and Abigail L. S. Swann, “Leaf Trait Acclimation Amplifies Simulated Climate Warming in Response to Elevated Carbon Dioxide,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 32 (October 2018), https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GB005883.

75 billion tons of soil: Stacey Noel et al., “Report for Policy and Decision Makers: Reaping Economic and Environmental Benefits from Sustainable Land Management,” Economics of Land Development Initiative (Bonn, Ger., September 2015), p. 10, www.eld-initiative.org/fileadmin/pdf/ELD-pm-report_05_web_300dpi.pdf.

the rate of erosion is ten times: Susan S. Lang, “ ‘Slow, Insidious’ Soil Erosion Threatens Human Health and Welfare as Well as the Environment, Cornell Study Asserts,” Cornell Chronicle, March 20, 2006, http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/slow-insidious-soil-erosion-threatens-human-health-and-welfare.

thirty to forty times as fast: Ibid.

lacking credit to make the necessary: Richard Hornbeck, “The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe,” American Economic Review 102, no. 4 (June 2012): pp. 1477–507, http://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.4.1477.

John Wesley Powell: Richard Seager et al., “Whither the 100th Meridian? The Once and Future Physical and Human Geography of America’s Arid-Humid Divide. Part 1: The Story So Far,” Earth Interactions 22, no. 5 (March 2018), https://doi.org/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1. You can read further by finding Powell’s own text, “Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. With Maps” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1879), https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf.

less farmable land: Seager, “Whither the 100th Meridian?” https://doi.org/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1.

separating the Sahara desert: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, “The 100th Meridian, Where the Great Plains Begins, May Be Shifting,” April 11, 2018, www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/100th-meridian-where-great-plains-begin-may-be-shifting.

That desert has expanded: Natalie Thomas and Sumant Nigam, “Twentieth-Century Climate Change over Africa: Seasonal Hydroclimate Trends and Sahara,” Journal of Climate 31, no. 22 (2018).

dropped from more than 30 percent: Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises” (Rome, 2010), p. 9, www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1683e/i1683e.pdf.

Born to Iowa family farmers: Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York: Knopf, 2018).

increase global greenhouse-gas emissions: Zhaohai Bai et al., “Global Environmental Costs of China’s Thirst for Milk,” Global Change Biology 24, no. 5 (May 2018): pp. 2198–211, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14047.

food production accounts for about a third: Natasha Gilbert, “One-Third of Our Greenhouse Gas Emissions Come from Agriculture,” Nature, October 31, 2012, www.nature.com/news/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708.

Greenpeace has estimated: Greenpeace International, “Greenpeace Calls for Decrease in Meat and Dairy Production and Consumption for a Healthier Planet” (press release), March 5, 2018, www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/15111/greenpeace-calls-for-decrease-in-meat-and-dairy-production-and-consumption-for-a-healthier-planet.

“the Malthusian tragic:” Kris Bartkus, “W. G. Sebald and the Malthusian Tragic,” The Millions, March 28, 2018.

At 2 degrees of warming: Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008), p. 84.

“two globe-girdling belts of perennial drought”: Ibid.

By 2080, without dramatic reductions: Benjamin I. Cook et al., “Global Warming and 21st Century Drying,” Climate Dynamics 43, no. 9–10 (March 2014): pp. 2607–27, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2075-y.

The same will be true in Iraq and Syria: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 101.

all the rivers east of the Sierra Nevada: Ibid., p. 102.

100 million hungry: Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition” (Rome, 2018), p. 57, www.fao.org/3/I9553EN/i9553en.pdf.

The spring of 2017 brought: “Fighting Famine in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen,” ReliefWeb, 2017, https://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ep/wfp292787.pdf.

truly customized farming strategies: Zhenling Cui et al, “Pursuing Sustainable Productivity with Millions of Smallholder Farmers,” Nature, March 7, 2018.

“soil-free startup”: Madeleine Cuff, “Green Growth: British Soil-Free Farming Startup Prepares for First Harvest,” Business Green, May 1, 2018.

“We are witnessing the greatest injection”: Helena Bottemiller Evich, “The Great Nutrient Collapse,” Politico, September 13, 2017.

has declined by as much as one-third: Donald R. Davis et al., “Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999,” Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23, no. 6 (2004): pp. 669–82.

the protein content of bee pollen: Lewis H. Ziska et al., “Rising Atmospheric CO₂ Is Reducing the Protein Concentration of a Floral Pollen Source Essential for North American Bees,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283, no. 1828 (April 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0414.

by 2050 as many as 150 million: Danielle E. Medek et al., “Estimated Effects of Future Atmospheric CO₂ Concentrations on Protein Intake and the Risk of Protein Deficiency by Country and Region,” Environmental Health Perspectives 125, no. 8 (August 2017), https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP41.

138 million could suffer: Samuel S. Myers et al., “Effect of Increased Concentrations of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on the Global Threat of Zinc Deficiency: A Modelling Study,” The Lancet 3, no. 10 (October 2015): PE639–E645, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(15)00093-5.

1.4 billion could face a dramatic decline: M. R. Smith et al., “Potential Rise in Iron Deficiency Due to Future Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” GeoHealth 1 (August 2017): pp. 248–57, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GH000018.

eighteen different strains of rice: Chunwu Zhu et al., “Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Levels This Century Will Alter the Protein, Micronutrients, and Vitamin Content of Rice Grains with Potential Health Consequences for the Poorest Rice-Dependent Countries,” Science Advances 4, no. 5 (May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaq1012.

Drowning

four feet of sea-level rise: Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney, “Scientists Nearly Double Sea Level Rise Projections for 2100, Because of Antarctica,” The Washington Post, March 30, 2016.

by the end of the century: Benjamin Strauss and Scott Kulp, “Extreme Sea Level Rise and the Stakes for America,” Climate Central, April 26, 2017, www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-sea-level-rise-stakes-for-america-21387.

A radical reduction: See the graphic “Surging Seas: 2°C Warming and Sea Level Rise” on the Climate Central website.

Jeff Goodell runs through: Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World (New York: Little, Brown, 2017), p. 13.

Atlantis: The historical basis, if any, for this legend remains a subject of debate and dispute, but for an overview (and the suggestion that the society was submerged by a volcano eruption on today’s Santorini), see Willie Drye, “Atlantis,” National Geographic, 2018.

as much as 5 percent: Jochen Hinkel et al., “Coastal Flood Damage and Adaptation Costs Under 21st Century Sea-Level Rise,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (February 2014), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1222469111.

Jakarta is one: Mayuri Mei Lin and Rafki Hidayat, “Jakarta, the Fastest-Sinking City in the World,” BBC News, August 13, 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44636934.

China is evacuating: Andrew Galbraith, “China Evacuates 127,000 People as Heavy Rains Lash Guangdong—Xinhua,” Reuters, September 1, 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-china-floods/china-evacuates-127000-people-as-heavy-rains-lash-guangdong-xinhua-idUSKCN1LH3BV.

Much of the infrastructure: Ramakrishnan Durairajan et al., “Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure,” Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop (July 16, 2018): pp. 9–15, https://doi.org/10.1145/3232755.3232775.

nearly 311,000 homes: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate” (Cambridge, MA, 2018), p. 5, www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/sea-level-rise-chronic-floods-and-us-coastal-real-estate-implications.

$100 trillion per year by 2100: University of Southampton, “Climate Change Threatens to Cause Trillions in Damage to World’s Coastal Regions If They Do Not Adapt to Sea-Level Rise,” February 4, 2014, www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2014/02/04-climate-change-threatens-damage-to-coastal-regions.page#.UvonXXewI2l.

$14 trillion a year: Svetlana Jevrejeva et al., “Flood Damage Costs Under the Sea Level Rise with Warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C,” Environmental Research Letters 13, no. 7 (July 2018), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aacc76.

continue for millennia: Andrea Dutton et al., “Sea-Level Rise Due to Polar Ice-Sheet Mass Loss During Past Warm Periods,” Science 349, no. 6244 (July 2015), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa4019.

two-degree scenario: “Surging Seas,” Climate Central.

about 444,000 square miles: Benjamin Strauss, “Coastal Nations, Megacities Face 20 Feet of Sea Rise,” Climate Central, July 9, 2015, www.climatecentral.org/news/nations-megacities-face-20-feet-of-sea-level-rise-19217.

the twenty cities most affected: Ibid.

flooding has quadrupled since 1980: European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, “New Data Confirm Increased Frequency of Extreme Weather Events, European National Science Academies Urge Further Action on Climate Change Adaptation,” March 21, 2018, https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies.

by 2100 high-tide flooding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Patterns and Projections of High Tide Flooding Along the US Coastline Using a Common Impact Threshold” (Silver Spring, MD, February 2018), p. ix, https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt86_PaP_of_HTFlooding.pdf.

affected 2.3 billion and killed 157,000: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters 1995–2015” (Geneva, 2015), p. 13, www.unisdr.org/2015/docs/climatechange/COP21_WeatherDisastersReport_2015_FINAL.pdf.

increase global rainfall to such a degree: Sven N. Willner et al., “Adaptation Required to Preserve Future High-End River Flood Risk at Present Levels,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao1914.

at risk of catastrophic inundation: Oliver E. J. Wing et al., “Estimates of Present and Future Flood Risk in the Conterminous United States,” Environmental Research Letters 13, no. 3 (February 2018), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaac65.

floods in South Asia killed 1,200: Oxfam International, “43 Million Hit by South Asia Floods: Oxfam Is Responding,” August 31, 2017, www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-08-31/43-million-hit-south-asia-floods-oxfam-responding.

António Guterres, the secretary-general: United Nations Secretary-General, “Secretary-General’s Press Encounter on Climate Change [with Q&A],” March 29, 2018, www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2018-03-29/secretary-generals-press-encounter-climate-change-qa.

eight times the entire global population: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Estimates of World Population,” www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.

Noah’s Ark story: There are a number of theories about historical flood events that may have inspired the biblical story, but this popular one was presented at length in William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

700,000 Rohingya refugees: Michael Schwirtz, “Besieged Rohingya Face ‘Crisis Within the Crisis’: Deadly Floods,” The New York Times, February 13, 2018.

When the Paris Agreement was drafted: Meehan Crist, “Besides, I’ll Be Dead,” London Review of Books, February 22, 2018, www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/meehan-crist/besides-ill-be-dead.

“sunny day flooding”: Jim Morrison, “Flooding Hot Spots: Why Seas Are Rising Faster on the US East Coast,” Yale Environment 360, April 24, 2018, https://e360.yale.edu/features/flooding-hot-spots-why-seas-are-rising-faster-on-the-u.s.-east-coast.

things accelerating faster: Andrew Shepherd, Helen Amanda Fricker, and Sinead Louise Farrell, “Trends and Connections Across the Antarctic Cryosphere,” Nature 558 (2018): pp. 223–32.

melt rate of the Antarctic: University of Leeds, “Antarctica Ramps Up Sea Level Rise,” June 13, 2018, www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4250/antarctica_ramps_up_sea_level_rise.

49 billion tons of ice each year: Chris Mooney, “Antarctic Ice Loss Has Tripled in a Decade. If That Continues, We Are in Serious Trouble,” The Washington Post, June 13, 2018.

several meters over fifty years: James Hansen et al., “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations That 2°C Global Warming Could Be Dangerous,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): pp. 3761–812, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3761-2016.

13,000 square miles: University of Maryland, “Decades of Satellite Monitoring Reveal Antarctic Ice Loss,” June 13, 2018, https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/4156.

determined by what human action: Hayley Dunning, “How to Save Antarctica (and the Rest of Earth Too),” Imperial College London, June 13, 2018, www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186668/how-save-antarctica-rest-earth.

never before observed in human history: Richard Zeebe et al., “Anthropogenic Carbon Release Rate Unprecedented During the Past 66 Million Years,” Nature Geoscience 9 (March 2016): pp. 325–29, https://doi.org//10.1038/ngeo2681.

“damage mechanics”: C. P. Borstad et al., “A Damage Mechanics Assessment of the Larsen B Ice Shelf Prior to Collapse: Toward a Physically-Based Calving Law,” Geophysical Research Letters 39 (September 2012), https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL053317.

around ten times faster: Sarah Griffiths, “Global Warming Is Happening ‘Ten Times Faster than at Any Time in the Earth’s History,’ Climate Experts Claim,” The Daily Mail, August 2, 2013. See also Melissa Davey, “Humans Causing Climate to Change 170 Times Faster than Natural Forces,” The Guardian, February 12, 2017; this estimate for a rate of warming 170 times faster came from Owen Gaffney and Will Steffen, “The Anthropocene Equation,” The Anthropocene Review, February 10, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019616688022.

the average American emits: Dirk Notz and Julienne Stroeve, “Observed Arctic Sea-Ice Loss Directly Follows Anthropogenic CO₂ Emission,” Science, November 3, 2016. See also Robinson Meyer, “The Average American Melts 645 Square Feet of Arctic Ice Every Year,” The Atlantic, November 3, 2016. And see also Ken Caldeira, “How Much Ice Is Melted by Each Carbon Dioxide Emission?” March 24, 2018, https://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/how-much-ice-is-melted-by-each-carbon-dioxide-emission.

1.2 degrees of global warming: Sebastian H. Mernild, “Is ‘Tipping Point’ for the Greenland Ice Sheet Approaching?” Aktuel Naturvidenskab, 2009, http://mernild.com/onewebmedia/2009.AN%20Mernild4.pdf.

raise sea levels six meters: National Snow and Ice Data Center, “Quick Facts on Ice Sheets,” https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html.

West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets: Patrick Lynch, “The ‘Unstable’ West Antarctic Ice Sheet: A Primer,” NASA, May 12, 2014, www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/antarctic-ice-sheet-20140512.

a billion tons of ice: UMassAmherst College of Engineering, “Gleason Participates in Groundbreaking Greenland Research That Makes Front Page of New York Times,” January 2017, https://engineering.umass.edu/news/gleason-participates-groundbreaking-greenland-research-that-makes-front-page-new-york-times.

raise global sea levels ten to twenty feet: Jonathan L. Bamber, “Reassessment of the Potential Sea-Level Rise from a Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Science 324, no. 5929 (May 2009): pp. 901–3, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1169335.

eighteen billion tons of ice: Alejandra Borunda, “We Know West Antarctica Is Melting. Is the East in Danger, Too?” National Geographic, August 10, 2018.

permafrost contains up to 1.8 trillion: NASA Science, “Is Arctic Permafrost the ‘Sleeping Giant’ of Climate Change?” June 24, 2013, https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/24jun_permafrost.

one Nature paper found that: Katey Walter Anthony et al., “21st-Century Modeled Permafrost Carbon Emissions Accelerated by Abrupt Thaw Beneath Lakes,” Nature Communications 9, no. 3262 (August 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05738-9. See also Ellen Gray, “Unexpected Future Boost of Methane Possible from Arctic Permafrost,” NASA Climate, August 20, 2018, https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-of-methane-possible-from-arctic-permafrost.

“abrupt thawing”: Anthony, “21st-Century Modeled Permafrost Carbon Emissions,” https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05738-9.

Atmospheric methane levels have risen: “What Is Behind Rising Levels of Methane in the Atmosphere?” NASA Earth Observatory, January 11, 2018, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/91564/what-is-behind-rising-levels-of-methane-in-the-atmosphere.

Arctic lakes could possibly double: Anthony, “21st-Century Modeled Permafrost Carbon Emissions,” https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05738-9.

between 37 and 81 percent by 2100: IPCC, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis—Summary for Policymakers (Geneva, October 2013), p. 23, www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/.

as quickly as the 2020s: Kevin Schaeffer et al., “Amount and Timing of Permafrost Release in Response to Climate Warming,” Tellus B, January 24, 2011.

a hundred billion tons: Ibid.

a massive warming equivalent: Peter Wadhams, “The Global Impacts of Rapidly Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice,” Yale Environment 360, September 26, 2016, https://e360.yale.edu/features/as_arctic_ocean_ice_disappears_global_climate_impacts_intensify_wadhams.

at least fifty meters: David Archer, The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

The U.S. Geological Survey: Jason Treat et al., “What the World Would Look Like If All the Ice Melted,” National Geographic, September 2013.

more than 97 percent of Florida: Benjamin Strauss, Scott Kulp, and Peter Clark, “Can You Guess What America Will Look Like in 10,000 Years? A Quiz,” The New York Times, April 20, 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/20/sunday-review/climate-flood-quiz.html.

Manaus, the capital: Treat, “What the World Would Look Like.”

More than 600 million: Gordon McGranahan et al., “The Rising Tide: Assessing the Risks of Climate Change and Human Settlements in Low Elevation Coastal Zones,” Environment and Urbanization 19, no. 1 (April 2007): pp. 17–27, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956247807076960.

Wildfire

Thomas Fire, the worst: CalFire, “Incident Information: Thomas Fire,” March 28, 2018, http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?incident_id=1922.

“15% contained”: CalFire, “Thomas Fire Incident Update,” December 11, 2017, http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/pub/cdf/images/incidentfile1922_3183.pdf.

“Los Angeles Notebook”: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968).

Five of the twenty worst fires: CalFire, “Top 20 Most Destructive California Wildfires,” August 20, 2018, www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Destruction.pdf.

1,240,000 acres: CalFire, “Incident Information: 2017,” January 24, 2018, http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_stats?year=2017.

172 fires broke out: California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, “October 2017 Fire Siege,” January 2018, http://bofdata.fire.ca.gov/board_business/binder_materials/2018/january_2018_meeting/full/full_14_presentation_october_2017_fire_siege.pdf.

One couple survived: Robin Abcarian, “They Survived Six Hours in a Pool as a Wildfire Burned Their Neighborhood to the Ground,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2017.

only the husband who emerged: Erin Allday, “Wine Country Wildfires: Huddled in Pool amid Blaze, Wife Dies in Husband’s Arms,” SF Gate, January 25, 2018.

more than two thousand square miles: CalFire, “Incident Information: 2018,” January 24, 2018, http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_stats?year=2018.

smoke blanketed almost half the country: Megan Molteni, “Wildfire Smoke Is Smothering the US—Even Where You Don’t Expect It,” Wired, August 14, 2018.

in British Columbia: Estefania Duran, “B.C. Year in Review 2017: Wildfires Devastate the Province like Never Before,” Global News, December 25, 2017, https://globalnews.ca/news/3921710/b-c-year-in-review-2017-wildfires.

L.A. has always been: Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990).

burned the state’s wine crop: Tiffany Hsu, “In California Wine Country, Wildfires Take a Toll on Vintages and Tourism,” The New York Times, October 10, 2017.

Getty Museum: Jessica Gelt, “Getty Museum Closes Because of Fire, but ‘The Safest Place for the Art Is Right Here,’ Spokesman Says,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2017.

wildfire season in the western United States: “Climate Change Indicators: U.S. Wildfires,” WX Shift, http://wxshift.com/climate-change/climate-indicators/us-wildfires.

nearly 20 percent: W. Matt Jolly et al., “Climate-Induced Variations in Global Wildfire Danger from 1979 to 2013,” Nature Communications 6, no. 7537 (July 2015), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8537.

By 2050, destruction: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 47.

ten million acres were burned: National Interagency Fire Center, “Total Wildland Fires and Acres (1926-2017),” www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html.

“We don’t even call it”: Melissa Pamer and Elizabeth Espinosa, “ ‘We Don’t Even Call It Fire Season Anymore…It’s Year Round’: Cal Fire,” KTLA 5, December 11, 2017, https://ktla.com/2017/12/11/we-dont-even-call-it-fire-season-anymore-its-year-round-cal-fire.

soot and ash they give off: William Finnegan, “California Burning,” New York Review of Books, August 16, 2018.

dozens of guests tried to escape: Jason Horowitz, “As Greek Wildfire Closed In, a Desperate Dash Ended in Death,” The New York Times, July 24, 2018.

Great Flood of 1862: Daniel L. Swain et al., “Increasing Precipitation Volatility in Twenty-First-Century California,” Nature Climate Change 8 (April 2018): pp. 427–33, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0140-y.

globally, between 260,000 and 600,000: Fay H. Johnston et al., “Estimated Global Mortality Attributable to Smoke from Landscape Fires,” Environmental Health Perspectives 120, no. 5 (May 2012), https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1104422.

Canadian fires have: George E. Le et al., “Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations Among the Elderly,” ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 3 (May 2014): pp. 713–31, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi3020713.

42 percent spike in hospital visits: C. Howard et al., “SOS: Summer of Smoke—A Mixed-Methods, Community-Based Study Investigating the Health Effects of a Prolonged, Severe Wildfire Season on a Subarctic Population,” Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine 19 (May 2017): p. S99, https://doi.org/10.1017/cem.2017.264.

“One of the strongest emotions”: Sharon J. Riley, “ ‘The Lost Summer’: The Emotional and Spiritual Toll of the Smoke Apocalypse,” The Narwhal, August 21, 2018, https://thenarwhal.ca/the-lost-summer-the-emotional-and-spiritual-toll-of-the-smoke-apocalypse.

Peatland fires in Indonesia: Susan E. Page et al., “The Amount of Carbon Released from Peat and Forest Fires in Indonesia During 1997,” Nature 420 (November 2002): pp. 61–65, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01131. For a picture of how peatland emissions will change going forward, see Angela V. Gallego-Sala et al., “Latitudinal Limits to the Predicted Increase of the Peatland Carbon Sink with Warming,” Nature Climate Change 8 (2018): pp. 907–13.

In California, a single wildfire: David R. Baker, “Huge Wildfires Can Wipe Out California’s Greenhouse Gas Gains,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 2017.

its second “hundred-year drought”: Joe Romm, “Science: Second ‘100-Year’ Amazon Drought in Five Years Caused Huge CO₂ Emissions. If This Pattern Continues, the Forest Would Become a Warming Source,” ThinkProgress, February 8, 2011, https://thinkprogress.org/science-second-100-year-amazon-drought-in-5-years-caused-huge-co2-emissions-if-this-pattern-7036a9074098.

the trees of the Amazon: Roel J. W. Brienen et al., “Long-Term Decline of the Amazon Carbon Sink,” Nature, March 2015.

A group of Brazilian scientists: Aline C. Soterroni et al., “Fate of the Amazon Is on the Ballot in Brazil’s Presidential Election,” Monga Bay, October 17, 2018, https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/fate-of-the-amazon-is-on-the-ballot-in-brazils-presidential-election-commentary/.

deforestation accounts for about 12 percent: G. R. van der Werf et al., “CO₂ Emissions from Forest Loss,” Nature Geoscience 2 (November 2009): pp. 737–38, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo671.

as much as 25 percent: Bob Berwyn, “How Wildfires Can Affect Climate Change (and Vice Versa),” Inside Climate News, August 23, 2018, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23082018/extreme-wildfires-climate-change-global-warming-air-pollution-fire-management-black-carbon-co2.

ability of forest soils to absorb : Daisy Dunne, “Methane Uptake from Forest Soils Has ‘Fallen by 77% in Three Decades,’ ” Carbon Brief, August 6, 2018, www.carbonbrief.org/methane-uptake-from-forest-soils-has-fallen-77-per-cent-three-decades.

an additional 1.5 degrees Celsius: Natalie M. Mahowald et al., “Are the Impacts of Land Use on Warming Underestimated in Climate Policy?” Environmental Research Letters 12, no. 9 (September 2017), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa836d.

30 percent of emissions: Quentin Lejeune et al., “Historical Deforestation Locally Increased the Intensity of Hot Days in Northern Mid-Latitudes,” Nature Climate Change 8 (April 2018): pp. 386–90, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0131-z.

twenty-seven additional cases: Leonardo Suveges Moreira Chaves et al., “Abundance of Impacted Forest Patches Less than 5 km² Is a Key Driver of the Incidence of Malaria in Amazonian Brazil,” Scientific Reports 8, no. 7077 (May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25344-5.

Disasters No Longer Natural

tornadoes will strike much more frequently: Francesco Fiondella, “Extreme Tornado Outbreaks Have Become More Common,” International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University, March 2, 2016, https://iri.columbia.edu/news/tornado-outbreaks.

their trails of destruction could grow: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 69.

three major hurricanes: Congressional Research Service, The National Hurricane Center and Forecasting Hurricanes: 2017 Overview and 2018 Outlook (Washington, D.C., August 23, 2018), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45264.pdf.

dropping on Houston: Javier Zarracina and Brian Resnick, “All the Rain That Hurricane Harvey Dumped on Texas and Louisiana, in One Massive Water Drop,” Vox, September 1, 2017.

record-breaking summer of 2018: Jason Samenow, “Red Hot Planet: This Summer’s Punishing and Historic Heat in Seven Charts and Maps,” The Washington Post, August 17, 2018.

In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers: U.S. Geological Survey, “Retreat of Glaciers in Glacier National Park,” April 6, 2016, www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/retreat-glaciers-glacier-national-park.

Already, storms have doubled since 1980: European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, “New Data Confirm Increased Frequency of Extreme Weather Events, European National Science Academies Urge Further Action on Climate Change Adaptation,” March 21, 2018, https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies.

New York City will suffer: Andra J. Garner et al., “Impact of Climate Change on New York City’s Coastal Flood Hazard: Increasing Flood Heights from the Preindustrial to 2300 CE,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (September 2017), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1703568114.

more intense rainstorms: U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014 National Climate Assessment (Washington, D.C., 2014), https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/heavy-downpours-increasing.

In the Northeast: U.S. Global Change Research Program, “Observed Change in Very Heavy Precipitation,” September 19, 2013, https://data.globalchange.gov/report/nca3/chapter/our-changing-climate/figure/observed-change-in-very-heavy-precipitation-2.

The island of Kauai: National Weather Service, “April 2018 Precipitation Summary,” May 4, 2018, www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/hydro/pages/apr18sum.php.

the damages from quotidian thunderstorms: Alyson Kenward and Urooj Raja, “Blackout: Extreme Weather, Climate Change and Power Outages,” Climate Central (Princeton, NJ, 2014), p. 4, http://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/PowerOutages.pdf.

When Hurricane Irma first emerged: Joe Romm, “The Case for a Category 6 Rating for Super-Hurricanes like Irma,” ThinkProgress, September 6, 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/category-six-hurricane-irma-62cfdfdd93cb.

flooding its agricultural lands: Frances Robles and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, “Puerto Rico’s Agriculture and Farmers Decimated by Maria,” The New York Times, September 24, 2017.

“We’re getting some intimations”: This was a comment Wark made on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mckenziewark/status/913382357230645248.

seventeen times more often: Ning Lin et al., “Hurricane Sandy’s Flood Frequency Increasing from Year 1800 to 2100,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, October 2016.

Katrina-level hurricanes are expected: Aslak Grinsted et al., “Projected Atlantic Hurricane Surge Threat from Rising Temperatures,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (March 2013), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1209980110.

Looking globally, researchers have found: Greg Holland and Cindy L. Bruyère, “Recent Intense Hurricane Response to Global Climate Change,” Climate Dynamics 42, no. 3–4 (February 2014): pp. 617–27, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1713-0.

Between just 2006 and 2013, the Philippines: Food and Agriculture Organization, “The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security” (Rome, 2015), p. xix, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/a-i5128e.pdf.

typhoons have intensified: Wei Mei and Shang-Ping Xie, “Intensification of Landfalling Typhoons over the Northwest Pacific Since the Late 1970s,” Nature Geoscience 9 (September 2016): pp. 753–57, https://doi.org/10.1038/NGEO2792.

By 2070, Asian megacities: Linda Poon, “Climate Change Is Testing Asia’s Megacities,” CityLab, October 9, 2018, www.citylab.com/environment/2018/10/asian-megacities-vs-tomorrows-typhoons/572062.

the more intense the blizzards: Judah Cohen et al., “Warm Arctic Episodes Linked with Increased Frequency of Extreme Winter Weather in the United States,” Nature Communications 9, no. 869 (March 2018): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9.

758 tornadoes: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, “State of the Climate: Tornadoes for April 2011,” May 2011, www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tornadoes/201104.

40 percent by 2010: Noah S. Diffenbaugh et al., “Robust Increases in Severe Thunderstorm Environments in Response to Greenhouse Forcing,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 41 (October 2013): pp. 16361–66, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1307758110.

$725 billion: Keith Porter et al., “Overview of the ARkStorm Scenario,” U.S. Geological Survey, January 2011, https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312.

a cloud of “unbearable” smells: Emily Atkin, “Minutes: ‘Unbearable’ Petrochemical Smells Are Reportedly Drifting into Houston,” The New Republic, August 2017.

nearly half a billion gallons: Frank Bajak and Lise Olsen, “Silent Spills,” Houston Chronicle, May 2018.

the city had already been knocked: Kevin Litten, “16 New Orleans Pumps, Not 14, Were Down Saturday and Remain Out: Officials,” The Times-Picayune, August 10, 2017.

the 2000 population of 480,000: Elizabeth Fussell, “Constructing New Orleans, Constructing Race: A Population History of New Orleans,” The Journal of American History 94, no. 3 (December 2007), pp. 846–55, www.jstor.org/stable/25095147.

as low as 230,000: Allison Plyer, “Facts for Features: Katrina Impact,” The Data Center, August 26, 2016, www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/katrina/facts-for-impact.

One of the fastest-growing cities: U.S. Census Bureau, “The South Is Home to 10 of the 15 Fastest-Growing Large Cities,” May 25, 2017, www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-81-population-estimates-subcounty.html.

included the fastest-growing suburb: Amy Newcomb, “Census Bureau Reveals Fastest-Growing Large Cities,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2018.

more than five times as many residents: U.S. Census Bureau figures.

brought there by the oil business: John Schwartz, “Exxon Misled the Public on Climate Change, Study Says,” The New York Times, August 23, 2017.

Lower Ninth Ward: Greg Allen, “Ghosts of Katrina Still Haunt New Orleans’ Shattered Lower Ninth Ward,” NPR, August 3, 2015, www.npr.org/2015/08/03/427844717/ghosts-of-katrina-still-haunt-new-orleans-shattered-lower-ninth-ward.

the entire coastline of Louisiana: Kevin Sack and John Schwartz, “Left to Louisiana’s Tides, a Village Fights for Time,” The New York Times, February 24, 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/24/us/jean-lafitte-floodwaters.html.

2,000 square miles already gone: Bob Marshall, Brian Jacobs, and Al Shaw, “Losing Ground,” ProPublica, August 28, 2014, http://projects.propublica.org/louisiana.

2018 road budget: Jeff Goodell, “Welcome to the Age of Climate Migration,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 2018.

islanders arrived in Florida: John D. Sutter and Sergio Hernandez, “ ‘Exodus’ from Puerto Rico: A Visual Guide,” CNN, February 21, 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/us/puerto-rico-migration-data-invs/index.html.

Freshwater Drain

Seventy-one percent of the planet: USGS Water Science School, “How Much Water Is There on, in, and Above the Earth?” U.S. Geological Survey, December 2, 2016, https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html.

Barely more than 2 percent: USGS Water Science School, “The World’s Water,” U.S. Geological Survey, December 2, 2016, https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html.

only 0.007 percent of the planet’s water: “Freshwater Crisis,” National Geographic.

Globally, between 70 and 80 percent: Tariq Khokhar, “Chart: Globally, 70% of Freshwater Is Used for Agriculture,” World Bank Data Blog, March 22, 2017, https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/chart-globally-70-freshwater-used-agriculture.

twenty liters of water each day: “Water Consumption in Africa,” Institute Water for Africa, https://water-for-africa.org/en/water-consumption/articles/water-consumption-in-africa.html.

less than half of what water organizations: UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication and Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, “The Human Right to Water and Sanitation,” www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/pdf/human_right_to_water_and_sanitation_media_brief.pdf.

global water demand is expected: “Half the World to Face Severe Water Stress by 2030 Unless Water Use Is ‘Decoupled’ from Economic Growth, Says International Resource Panel,” United Nations Environment Programme, March 21, 2016, www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/half-world-face-severe-water-stress-2030-unless-water-use-decoupled.

loss of 16 percent of freshwater: “Water Audits and Water Loss Control for Public Water Systems,” Environmental Protection Agency, July 2013, www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-04/documents/epa816f13002.pdf.

in Brazil, the estimate is 40 percent: “Treated Water Loss Is Still High in Brazil,” World Water Forum, November 21, 2017, http://8.worldwaterforum.org/en/news/treated-water-loss-still-high-brazil.

a tool of inequality: In 2018, it was revealed that Harvard had aggressively bought up California vineyards for the water underground.

2.1 billion people around the world: “2.1 Billion People Lack Safe Drinking Water at Home, More than Twice as Many Lack Safe Sanitation,” World Health Organization, July 12, 2017, www.who.int/news-room/detail/12-07-2017-2-1-billion-people-lack-safe-drinking-water-at-home-more-than-twice-as-many-lack-safe-sanitation.

4.5 billion don’t have safely managed water: Ibid.

Half of the world’s population: M. Huss et al., “Toward Mountains Without Permanent Snow and Ice,” Earth’s Future 5, no. 5 (May 2017): pp. 418–35, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016EF000514.

the glaciers of the Himalayas: P. D. A. Kraaijenbrink, “Impact of a Global Temperature Rise of 1.5 Degrees Celsius on Asia’s Glaciers,” Nature 549 (September 2017): pp. 257–60, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23878.

At four degrees, the snow-capped Alps: Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008), p. 202.

70 percent less snow: Christoph Marty et al., “How Much Can We Save? Impact of Different Emission Scenarios on Future Snow Cover in the Alps,” The Cryosphere, 2017.

250 million Africans: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries” (New York, 2007), p. 5, https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/impacts.pdf.

a billion people in Asia: Charles Fant et al., “Projections of Water Stress Based on an Ensemble of Socioeconomic Growth and Climate Change Scenarios: A Case Study in Asia,” PLOS One 11, no. 3 (March 2016), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150633.

freshwater availability in cities: World Bank, “High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy” (Washington, D.C., 2016), p. vi.

five billion people: UN Water, “The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-Based Solutions for Water” (Paris, 2018), p. 3, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002614/261424e.pdf.

boomtown Phoenix: Marcello Rossi, “Desert City Phoenix Mulls Ways to Quench Thirst of Sprawling Suburbs,” Thomson Reuters Foundation News, June 7, 2018, news.trust.org/item/20180607120002-7kwzq.

even London is beginning to worry: Edoardo Borgomeo, “Will London Run Out of Water?” The Conversation, May 24, 2018, https://theconversation.com/will-london-run-out-of-water-97107.

“high to extreme water stress”: NITI Aayog, Composite Water Management Index: A Tool for Water Management (June 2018), p. 15, www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/2018-05-18-Water-index-Report_vS6B.pdf.

water availability in Pakistan: Rina Saeed Khan, “Water Pressures Rise in Pakistan as Drought Meets a Growing Population,” Reuters, June 14, 2018, https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL5N1T7502.

the Aral Sea: NASA Earth Observatory, “World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea,” https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/WorldOfChange/AralSea.

Lake Poopó: NASA Earth Observatory, “Bolivia’s Lake Poopó Disappears,” January 23, 2016, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87363/bolivias-lake-poopo-disappears.

Lake Urmia: Amir AghaKouchak et al., “Aral Sea Syndrome Desiccates Lake Urmia: Call for Action,” Journal of Great Lakes Research 41, no. 1 (March 2015): pp. 307–11, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2014.12.007.

Lake Chad: “Africa’s Vanishing Lake Chad,” Africa Renewal (April 2012), www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2012/africa%E2%80%99s-vanishing-lake-chad.

warmwater-friendly bacteria: Boqiang Qin et al., “A Drinking Water Crisis in Lake Taihu, China: Linkage to Climatic Variability and Lake Management,” Environmental Management 45, no. 1 (January 2010): pp. 105–12, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-009-9393-6.

Lake Tanganyika: Jessica E. Tierney et al., “Late-Twentieth-Century Warming in Lake Tanganyika Unprecedented Since AD 500,” Nature Geoscience 3 (May 2010): pp. 422–25, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo865. See also, for instance, Clea Broadhurst, “Global Warming Depletes Lake Tanganikya’s Fish Stocks,” RFI, August 9, 2016, http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20160809-global-warming-responsible-decline-fish-lake-tanganyika.

16 percent of the world’s natural methane: E. J. S. Emilson et al., “Climate-Driven Shifts in Sediment Chemistry Enhance Methane Production in Northern Lakes,” Nature Communications 9, no. 1801 (May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04236-2. See also David Bastviken et al., “Methane Emissions from Lakes: Dependence of Lake Characteristics, Two Regional Assessments, and a Global Estimate,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18 (2004), https://doi.org/10.1029/2004GB002238.

could double those emissions: “Greenhouse Gas ‘Feedback Loop’ Discovered in Freshwater Lakes,” University of Cambridge, May 4, 2018, www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/greenhouse-gas-feedback-loop-discovered-in-freshwater-lakes.

aquifers already supply: USGS Water Science School, “Groundwater Use in the United States,” U.S. Geological Survey, June 26, 2018, https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wugw.html.

wells that used to draw water: Brian Clark Howard, “California Drought Spurs Groundwater Drilling Boom in Central Valley,” National Geographic, August 16, 2014.

lost twelve cubic miles: Kevin Wilcox, “Aquifers Depleted in Colorado River Basin,” Civil Engineering, August 5, 2014, www.asce.org/magazine/20140805-aquifers-depleted-in-colorado-river-basin.

Ogallala Aquifer: Sandra Postel, “Drought Hastens Groundwater Depletion in the Texas Panhandle,” National Geographic, July 24, 2014.

expected to drain by 70 percent: Kansas State University, “Study Forecasts Future Water Levels of Crucial Agricultural Aquifer,” K-State News, August 26, 2013, www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/aug13/groundwater82613.html. See also David R. Steward et al., “Tapping Unsustainable Groundwater Stores for Agricultural Production in the High Plains Aquifer of Kansas, Projections to 2110,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110. no. 37 (September 2013), pp. E3477–86, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220351110.

twenty-one cities: NITI Aayog, Composite Water Management Index, p. 22, www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/2018-05-18-Water-index-Report_vS6B.pdf.

The first Day Zero: City of Cape Town, “Day Zero: When Is It, What Is It, and How Can We Avoid It?” November 15, 2017.

In a memorable first-person account: Adam Welz, “Letter from a Bed in Cape Town,” Sierra, February 12, 2018, www.sierraclub.org/sierra/letter-bed-cape-town-drought-day-zero.

in arid Utah: Mark Milligan, “Glad You Asked: Does Utah Really Use More Water than Any Other State?” Utah Geological Survey, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/does-utah-use-more-water.

South Africa had nine million people: UNESCO, Water: A Shared Responsibility—The United Nations World Water Development Report 2 (Paris, 2006), p. 502, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001454/145405e.pdf#page=519.

to produce the nation’s wine crop: Stephen Leahy, “From Not Enough to Too Much, the World’s Water Crisis Explained,” National Geographic, March 22, 2018.

total urban consumption: Public Policy Institute for California, “Water Use in California,” July 2016, www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california.

limiting water use to twelve hours: Jon Gerberg, “A Megacity Without Water: São Paulo’s Drought,” Time, October 13, 2015.

aggressive rationing system: Simon Romero, “Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City,” The New York Times, February 16, 2015.

barge in drinking water from France: Graham Keeley, “Barcelona Forced to Import Emergency Water,” The Guardian, May 14, 2008.

“millennium drought”: “Recent Rainfall, Drought and Southern Australia’s Long-Term Rainfall Decline,” Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, April 2015, www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a010-southern-rainfall-decline.shtml.

99 and 84 percent, respectively: Albert I. J. M. van Dijk et al., “The Millennium Drought in Southeast Australia (2001–2009): Natural and Human Causes and Implications for Water Resources, Ecosystems, Economy, and Society,” Water Resources Research 49 (February 2013): pp. 1040–57, http://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20123.

wetlands turned acidic: “Managing Water for the Environment During Drought: Lessons from Victoria, Australia, Technical Appendices,” Public Policy Institute of California (San Francisco, June 2016), p. 8, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/other/0616JMR_appendix.pdf.

for weeks in May and June: Michael Safi, “Washing Is a Privilege: Life on the Frontline of India’s Water Crisis,” The Guardian, June 21, 2018. See also Maria Abi-Habib and Hari Kumar, “Deadly Tensions Rise as India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low,” The New York Times, June 17, 2018.

United States west of Texas: Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, “Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity,” Science Advances 2, no. 2 (February 2016), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500323.

water demand from the global food system: World Bank, “High and Dry,” p. 5.

“the impacts of climate change”: Ibid., p. vi.

regional GDP could decline: Ibid., p. 13.

list of all armed conflicts: “Water Conflict,” Pacific Institute: The World’s Water, May 2018. www.worldwater.org/water-conflict.

the number of cholera cases: International Committee of the Red Cross, “Health Crisis in Yemen,” www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/middle-east/yemen/health-crisis-yemen.

Dying Oceans

“Undersea”: Carson was just thirty when she published her essay in The Atlantic, still working as a biologist for the Fisheries Bureau of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the oceans, she wrote, “we see parts of the plan fall into place: the water receiving from earth and air the simple materials, storing them up until the gathering energy of the spring sun wakens the sleeping plants to a burst of dynamic activity, hungry swarms of planktonic animals growing and multiplying upon the abundant plants, and themselves falling prey to the shoals of fish; all, in the end; to be redissolved into their component substances when the inexorable laws of the sea demand it. Individual elements are lost to view, only to repair again and again in different incarnations in a kind of material immortality. Kindred forces to those which, in some period inconceivably remote, gave birth to that primeval bit of protoplasm tossing on the ancient seas continue their mighty and incomprehensible work. Against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.”

70 percent of the earth’s surface: National Ocean Service, “How Much Water Is in the Ocean?” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June 25, 2018, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanwater.html.

seafood accounts for nearly a fifth: “Availability and Consumption of Fish,” World Health Organization, www.who.int/nutrition/topics/3_foodconsumption/en/index5.html.

fish populations have migrated: Malin L. Pinsky et al., “Preparing Ocean Governance for Species on the Move,” Science 360, no. 6394 (June 2018): pp. 1189–91, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat2360.

13 percent of the ocean undamaged: Kendall R. Jones et al., “The Location and Protection Status of Earth’s Diminishing Marine Wilderness,” Current Biology 28, no. 15 (August 2018): pp. 2506–12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.010.

parts of the Arctic have been so transformed: Sigrid Lind et al., “Arctic Warming Hotspot in the Northern Barents Sea Linked to Declining Sea-Ice Import,” Nature Climate Change 8 (June 2018): pp. 634–39, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0205-y.

more than a fourth of the carbon emitted: Rob Monroe, “How Much CO₂ Can the Oceans Take Up?” Scripps Institution of Oceanography, July 13, 2013, https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/07/03/how-much-co2-can-the-oceans-take-up.

90 percent of global warming’s excess heat: Peter J. Gleckler et al., “Industrial-Era Global Ocean Heat Uptake Doubles in Recent Decades,” Nature Climate Change 6 (January 2016): pp. 394–98, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2915.

absorbing three times as much: Ibid.

90 percent of the energy needs: Australian Government Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, “Managing the Reef.”

Great Barrier Reef: Robinson Meyer, “Since 2016, Half of All Coral in the Great Barrier Reef Has Died,” The Atlantic, April 2018.

from 2014 to 2017: Michon Scott and Rebecca Lindsey, “Unprecedented Three Years of Global Coral Bleaching, 2014–2017,” Climate.gov, August 1, 2018, www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/unprecedented-3-years-global-coral-bleaching-2014%E2%80%932017.

“twilight zone”: C. C. Baldwin et al., “Below the Mesophotic,” Scientific Reports 8, no. 4920 (March 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23067-1.

threaten 90 percent of all reefs: Lauretta Burke et al., “Reefs at Risk Revisited,” World Resources Institute (Washington, D.C., 2011), p. 6, https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/pdf/reefs_at_risk_revisited.pdf.

as much as a quarter of all marine life: Ocean Portal Team, “Corals and Coral Reefs,” Smithsonian, April 2018, https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/corals-and-coral-reefs.

food and income for half a billion: “Coral Ecosystems,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/coral-ecosystems.

worth at least $400 million: Michael W. Beck et al., “The Global Flood Protection Savings Provided by Coral Reefs,” Nature Communications 9, no. 2186 (June 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04568-z.

oysters and mussels will struggle: Kate Madin, “Ocean Acidification: A Risky Shell Game,” Oceanus Magazine, December 4, 2009, www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-risky-shell-game.

fishes’ sense of smell: Cosima Porteus et al., “Near-Future CO₂ Levels Impair the Olfactory System of Marine Fish,” Nature Climate Change 8 (July 23, 2018).

32 percent in just ten years: Graham Edgar and Trevor J. Ward, “Australian Commercial Fish Populations Drop by a Third over Ten Years,” The Conversation, June 6, 2018, https://theconversation.com/australian-commercial-fish-populations-drop-by-a-third-over-ten-years-97689.

by a factor perhaps as large as a thousand: Jurriaan M. De Vos et al., “Estimating the Normal Background Rate of Species Extinction,” Conservation Biology, August 26, 2014.

an era marked by ocean acidification: A. H. Altieri and K. B. Gedan, “Climate Change and Dead Zones,” Global Change Biology (November 10, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12754.

with no oxygen at all: “SOS: Is Climate Change Suffocating Our Seas?” National Science Foundation, www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/deadzones/climatechange.jsp.

a dead zone the size of Florida: Bastien Y. Queste et al., “Physical Controls on Oxygen Distribution and Denitrification Potential in the North West Arabian Sea,” Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 9 (May 2018). See also “Growing ‘Dead Zone’ Confirmed by Underwater Robots” (press release), University of East Anglia, April 27, 2018, www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/growing-dead-zone-confirmed-by-underwater-robots-in-the-gulf-of-oman.

Dramatic declines in ocean oxygen: Peter Brannen, “A Foreboding Similarity in Today’s Oceans and a 94-Million-Year-Old Catastrophe,” The Atlantic, January 12, 2018. See also Dana Nuccitelli, “Burning Coal May Have Caused Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction,” The Guardian, March 12, 2018.

trip can take a thousand years: National Ocean Service, “Currents: The Global Conveyor Belt,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/05conveyor2.html.

depressed the velocity of the Gulf Stream: Stefan Rahmstorf et al., “Exceptional Twentieth-Century Slowdown in Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation,” Nature Climate Change 5 (May 2015), https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2554.

“an unprecedented event”: Ibid.

two major papers: L. Caesar et al., “Observed Fingerprint of a Weakening Atlantic Ocean Overturning Circulation,” Nature 556 (April 2018): pp. 191–96, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0006-5; David J. R. Thornalley et al., “Anomalously weak Labrador Sea convection and Atlantic overturning during the past 150 years,” Nature 556 (April 2018), pp. 227–30, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0007-4.

“tipping point”: Joseph Romm, “Dangerous Climate Tipping Point Is ‘About a Century Ahead of Schedule’ Warns Scientist,” Think Progress, April 12, 2018.

Unbreathable Air

cognitive ability declines: Joseph Romm, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 113.

almost a quarter of those surveyed in Texas: Ibid., p. 114.

deaths from dust pollution: Ploy Achakulwisut et al., “Drought Sensitivity in Fine Dust in the U.S. Southwest,” Environmental Research Letters 13 (May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf20.

a 70 percent increase: G. G. Pfister et al., “Projections of Future Summertime Ozone over the U.S.,” Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 119, no. 9 (May 2014): pp. 5559–82, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JD020932.

2 billion people globally: Romm, Climate Change, p. 105.

10,000 people die: DARA, Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet, 2nd ed. (Madrid, 2012), p. 17, https://daraint.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/CVM2-Low.pdf. James Hansen himself has made this comparison in a number of venues, including in an interview with me published in New York as “Climate Scientist James Hansen: ‘The Planet Could Become Ungovernable,’ ” July 12, 2017.

researchers call the effect “huge”: Xin Zhang et al., “The Impact of Exposure to Air Pollution on Cognitive Performance,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 155, no. 37 (September 2018): pp. 9193–97, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809474115. Coauthor Xi Chen made the “huge” comment to a number of news outlets, including The Guardian: Damian Carrington and Lily Kuo, “Air Pollution Causes ‘Huge’ Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals,” August 27, 2018.

Simple temperature rise: Joshua Goodman et al., “Heat and Learning” (National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 24639, May 2018), https://doi.org/10.3386/w24639.

increased mental illness in children: Anna Oudin et al., “Association Between Neighbourhood Air Pollution Concentrations and Dispensed Medication for Psychiatric Disorders in a Large Longitudinal Cohort of Swedish Children and Adolescents,” BMJ Open 6, no. 6 (June 2016), https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010004.

likelihood of dementia in adults: Hong Chen et al., “Living near Major Roads and the Incidence of Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis: A Population-Based Cohort Study,” The Lancet 389, no. 10070 (February 2017), pp. 718–26, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32399-6.

reduce earnings and labor force participation: Adam Isen et al., “Every Breath You Take—Every Dollar You’ll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970” (National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 19858, September 2015), https://doi.org/10.3386/w19858.

E-ZPass: Janet Currie and W. Reed Walker, “Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass” (National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 15413, April 2012), https://doi.org/10.3386/w15413.

melting Arctic ice remodeled Asian weather patterns: Yufei Zou et al., “Arctic Sea Ice, Eurasia Snow, and Extreme Winter Haze in China,” Science Advances 3, no. 3 (March 2017), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602751.

peak Air Quality Index of 993: Steve LeVine, “Pollution Score: Beijing 993, New York 19,” Quartz, January 14, 2013, https://qz.com/43298/pollution-score-beijing-993-new-york-19.

new and unstudied kind of smog: Lijian Han et al., “Multicontaminant Air Pollution in Chinese Cities,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 96 (February 2018): pp. 233–42E, http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.17.195560; Fred Pearce, “How a ‘Toxic Cocktail’ Is Posing a Troubling Health Risk in China’s Cities,” Yale Environment 360, April 17, 2018, https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-toxic-cocktail-is-posing-a-troubling-health-risk-in-chinese-cities.

1.37 million deaths: Jun Liu et al., “Estimating Adult Mortality Attributable to PM2.5 Exposure in China with Assimilated PM2.5 Concentrations Based on a Ground Monitoring Network,” Science of the Total Environment 568 (October 2016): pp. 1253–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.05.165.

the air around San Francisco: Michelle Robertson, “It’s Not Just Fog Turning the Sky Gray: SF Air Quality Is Three Times Worse than Beijing,” SF Gate, August 23, 2018.

In Seattle: In August 2018, the mayor’s office tweeted, “Today’s air quality has been declared UNHEALTHY FOR ALL GROUPS. Stay inside, limit outdoor work, and try not to drive.”

Air Quality Index reached 999: Rachel Feltman, “Air Pollution in Delhi Is Literally off the Charts,” Popular Science, November 8, 2016.

more than two packs of cigarettes: Richard A. Muller and Elizabeth A. Muller, “Air Pollution and Cigarette Equivalence,” Berkeley Earth, http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-and-cigarette-equivalence.

patient surge of 20 percent: Durgesh Nandan Jha, “Pollution Causing Arthritis to Flare Up, 20% Rise in Patients at Hospitals,” The Times of India, November 11, 2017.

cars crashed in pileups: “Blinding Smog Causes 24-Vehicle Pile-up on Expressway near Delhi,” NDTV, November 8, 2017.

United canceled flights: Catherine Ngai, Jamie Freed, and Henning Gloystein, “United Resumes Newark-Delhi Flights After Halt Due to Poor Air Quality,” Reuters, November 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airlines-india-pollution/united-resumes-newark-delhi-flights-after-halt-due-to-poor-air-quality-idUSKBN1DC142?il=0.

even short-term exposure: Benjamin D. Horne et al., “Short-Term Elevation of Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Acute Lower Respiratory Infection,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 198, no. 6, (September 2018), https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.201709-1883OC.

nine million premature deaths: Pamela Das and Richard Horton, “Pollution, Health, and the Planet: Time for Decisive Action,” The Lancet 391, no. 10119 (October 2017): pp. 407–8, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32588-6.

prevalence of stroke: Kuam Ken Lee et al., “Air Pollution and Stroke,” Journal of Stroke 20, no. 1 (January 2018): pp. 2–11, https://doi.org/10.5853/jos.2017.02894.

heart disease: R. D. Brook et al., “Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease: An Update to the Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association,” Circulation 121, no. 21 (June 2010): pp. 2331–78, https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0b013e3181dbece1.

cancer of all kinds: Kate Kelland and Stephanie Nebehay, “Air Pollution a Leading Cause of Cancer—U.N. Agency,” Reuters, October 17, 2013, www.reuters.com/article/us-cancer-pollution/air-pollution-a-leading-cause-of-cancer-u-n-agency-idUSBRE99G0BB20131017.

acute and chronic respiratory diseases: Michael Guarnieri and John R. Balmes, “Outdoor Air Pollution and Asthma,” The Lancet 383, no. 9928 (May 2014), https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60617-6.

adverse pregnancy outcomes: Jessica Glenza, “Millions of Premature Births Could Be Linked to Air Pollution, Study Finds,” The Guardian, February 16, 2017.

worse memory, attention, and vocabulary: Nicole Wetsman, “Air Pollution Might Be the New Lead,” Popular Science, April 5, 2018.

ADHD: Oddvar Myhre et al., “Early Life Exposure to Air Pollution Particulate Matter (PM) as Risk Factor for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Need for Novel Strategies for Mechanisms and Causalities,” Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology 354 (September 2018): pp. 196–214, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.taap.2018.03.015.

autism spectrum disorders: Raanan Raz et al., “Autism Spectrum Disorder and Particulate Matter Air Pollution Before, During, and After Pregnancy: A Nested Case-Control Analysis Within the Nurses’ Health Study II Cohort,” Environmental Health Perspectives 123, no. 3 (March 2015): pp. 264–70, https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1408133.

damage the development of neurons: Sam Brockmeyer and Amedeo D’Angiulli, “How Air Pollution Alters Brain Development: The Role of Neuroinflammation,” Translational Neuroscience 7 (March 2016): pp. 24–30, https://doi.org/10.1515/tnsci-2016-0005.

deform your DNA: Frederica Perera et al., “Shorter Telomere Length in Cord Blood Associated with Prenatal Air Pollution Exposure: Benefits of Intervention,” Environment International 113 (April 2018): pp. 335–40, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.01.005.

98 percent of cities: World Health Organization, “WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,” 2016, www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en.

95 percent of the world’s population: Health Effects Institute, “State of Global Air 2018: A Special Report on Global Exposure to Air Pollution and Its Disease Burden” (Boston, 2018), p. 3, www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-2018-report.pdf.

more than a million Chinese each year: Aaron J. Cohen et al., “Estimates and 25-Year Trends of the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Ambient Air Pollution: An Analysis of Data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015,” The Lancet 389, no. 10082 (May 2017): pp. 1907–18, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30505-6.

one out of six deaths: Das and Horton, “Pollution, Health, and the Planet,” https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32588-6.

“Great Pacific garbage patch”: Smithsonian calls it more of a “trash soup.”

700,000 of them can be released: Imogen E. Napper and Richard C. Thompson, “Release of Synthetic Microplastic Fibres from Domestic Washing Machines: Effects of Fabric Type and Washing Conditions,” Marine Pollution Bulletin 112, no. 1–2 (November 2016): pp. 39–45, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.09.025.

a quarter of fish sold: Kat Kerlin, “Plastic for Dinner: A Quarter of Fish Sold at Markets Contain Human-Made Debris,” UC Davis, September 24, 2015, www.ucdavis.edu/news/plastic-dinner-quarter-fish-sold-markets-contain-human-made-debris.

11,000 bits each year: Lisbeth Van Cauwenberghe and Colin R. Janssen, “Microplastics in Bivalves Cultured for Human Consumption,” Environmental Pollution 193 (October 2014): pp. 65–70, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2014.06.010.

total number of marine species: Clive Cookson, “The Problem with Plastic: Can Our Oceans Survive?” Financial Times, January 23, 2018.

73 percent of fish surveyed: Alina M. Wieczorek et al., “Frequency of Microplastics in Mesopelagic Fishes from the Northwest Atlantic,” Frontiers in Marine Science (February 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00039.

every 100 grams of mussels: Jiana Lee et al., “Microplastics in Mussels Sampled from Coastal Waters and Supermarkets in the United Kingdom,” Environmental Pollution 241 (October 2018): pp. 35–44, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.05.038.

Some fish have learned to eat plastic: Matthew S. Savoca et al., “Odours from Marine Plastic Debris Induce Food Search Behaviours in a Forage Fish,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 284, no. 1860 (August 2017), https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1000.

bits that scientists are now calling “nanoplastics”: Amanda L. Dawson et al., “Turning Microplastics into Nanoplastics Through Digestive Fragmentation by Antarctic Krill,” Nature Communications 9, no. 1001 (March 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03465-9.

3.4 million microplastic particles: Courtney Humphries, “Freshwater’s Macro Microplastic Problem,” Nova, May 11, 2017, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/freshwater-microplastics.

225 pieces of plastic: Cookson, “The Problem with Plastic.”

sixteen of seventeen tested brands: Ali Karami et al., “The Presence of Microplastics in Commercial Salts from Different Countries,” Scientific Reports 7, no. 46173 (April 2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46173.

one million times more toxic: 5 Gyres: Science to Solutions, “Take Action: Microbeads,” www.5gyres.org/microbeads.

We can breathe in microplastics: Johnny Gasperi et al., “Microplastics in Air: Are We Breathing It In?” Current Opinion in Environmental Science and Health 1 (February 2018): pp. 1–5, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coesh.2017.10.002.

94 percent of all tested American cities: Dan Morrison and Christopher Tyree, “Invisibles: The Plastic Inside Us,” Orb (2017), https://orbmedia.org/stories/Invisibles_plastics.

expected to triple by 2050: World Economic Forum, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics (Cologny, Switz.: January 2016), p. 10.

they release methane and ethylene: Sarah-Jeanne Royer et al., “Production of Methane and Ethylene from Plastic in the Environment,” PLOS One 13, no. 8 (August 2018), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200574.

Aerosol products actually suppress: B. H. Samset et al., “Climate Impacts from a Removal of Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions,” Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 2 (January 2018): pp. 1020–29, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076079.

only heated up two-thirds as much: Samset, “Climate Impacts from a Removal,” https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076079. Samset himself says, “Global warming to date is one degree Celsius (or thereabouts). Our paper showed that industrial/human induced aerosol emissions mask about half a degree of additional warming.” And because of how unevenly warming is distributed across the planet, he adds, “we note that in two models, Arctic warming due to aerosol reductions reaches 4°C in some locations.”

“Catch-22”: P. J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” Climatic Change 77 (2006): pp. 211–19, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9101-y.

“devil’s bargain”: Eric Holthaus, “Devil’s Bargain,” Grist, February 8, 2018, https://grist.org/article/geoengineering-climate-change-air-pollution-save-planet.

millions of lives each year: This estimate of deaths from air pollution comes from the World Health Organization.

tens of thousands of additional premature deaths: Sebastian D. Eastham et al., “Quantifying the Impact of Sulfate Geoengineering on Mortality from Air Quality and UV-B Exposure,” Atmospheric Environment 187 (August 2018): pp. 424–34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2018.05.047.

rapidly dry the Amazon: Christopher H. Trisos et al., “Potentially Dangerous Consequences for Biodiversity of Solar Geoengineering Implementation and Termination,” Nature Ecology and Evolution 2 (January 2018), pp. 472–82, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0431-0.

negative effect on plant growth: Jonathan Proctor et al., “Estimating Global Agricultural Effects of Geoengineering Using Volcanic Eruptions,” Nature 560 (August 2018): pp. 480–83, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0417-3.

Plagues of Warming

diseases that have not circulated: Jasmin Fox-Skelly, “There Are Diseases Hidden in Ice, and They Are Waking Up,” BBC, May 4, 2017, www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up.

“extremophile” bacteria: “NASA Finds Life at ‘Extremes,’ ” NASA, February 24, 2005, www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/extremophile1.html.

an 8-million-year-old bug: Kay D. Bidle et al., “Fossil Genes and Microbes in the Oldest Ice on Earth,” Proceedings of the National Academies of Science 104, no. 33 (August 2007): pp. 13455–60, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0702196104.

a Russian scientist self-injected: Jordan Pearson, “Meet the Scientist Who Injected Himself with 3.5 Million-Year-Old Bacteria,” Motherboard, December 9, 2015, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp3gg7/meet-the-scientist-who-injected-himself-with-35-million-year-old-bacteria.

a worm that had been frozen: Mike McRae, “A Tiny Worm Frozen in Siberian Permafrost for 42,000 Years Was Just Brought Back to Life,” Science Alert, July 27, 2018, www.sciencealert.com/40-000-year-old-nematodes-revived-siberian-permafrost.

remnants of the 1918 flu: Jeffery K. Taubenberger et al., “Discovery and Characterization of the 1918 Pandemic Influenza Virus in Historical Context,” Antiviral Therapy 12 (2007): pp. 581–91.

infected as many as 500 million and killed as many as 50 million: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Remembering the 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” www.cdc.gov/features/1918-flu-pandemic/index.html; Jeffery K. Taubenberger and David Morens, “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no.1 (January 2006): pp. 15–22, https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1201.050979.

3 percent of the world’s population: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Estimates of World Population,” www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.

smallpox: “Experts Warn of Threat of Born-Again Smallpox from Old Siberian Graveyards,” The Siberian Times, August 12, 2016, https://siberiantimes.com/science/opinion/features/f0249-experts-warn-of-threat-of-born-again-smallpox-from-old-siberian-graveyards.

bubonic plague: Fox-Skelly, “There Are Diseases Hidden in Ice.”

among many other diseases: Robinson Meyer, “The Zombie Diseases of Climate Change,” The Atlantic, November 6, 2017.

But in 2016, a boy: Michaeleen Doucleff, “Anthrax Outbreak in Russia Thought to Be Result of Thawing Permafrost,” NPR, August 3, 2016, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost.

Haemagogus and Sabethes mosquitoes: World Health Organization, “Yellow Fever—Brazil,” March 9, 2018, www.who.int/csr/don/09-march-2018-yellow-fever-brazil.

more than thirty million people: Ibid.

kills between 3 and 8 percent: Shasta Darlington and Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Yellow Fever Circles Brazil’s Huge Cities,” The New York Times, March 8, 2018.

Malaria alone kills: World Health Organization, “Number of Malaria Deaths,” www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths. See also Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Epidemiology,” www.cdc.gov/dengue/epidemiology/index.html.

disease mutation: “Zika Microcephaly Linked to Single Mutation,” Nature, October 3, 2017, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-04093-x.

appear to cause birth defects: Ling Yuan et al., “A Single Mutation in the prM Protein of Zika Virus Contributes to Fetal Microcephaly,” Science 358, no. 6365 (November 2017): pp. 933–36, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam7120.

when another disease is present: Declan Butler, “Brazil Asks Whether Zika Acts Alone to Cause Birth Defects,” Nature, July 25, 2016, www.nature.com/news/brazil-asks-whether-zika-acts-alone-to-cause-birth-defects-1.20309.

World Bank estimates that by 2030: World Bank Group’s Climate Change and Development Series, “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty” (Washington, D.C., 2016), p. 119, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/22787/9781464806735.pdf.

Lyme case counts have spiked: Mary Beth Pfeiffer, Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2018), pp. 3–13.

300,000 new infections each year: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Lyme and Other Tickborne Diseases,” www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/diseases-and-conditions/lyme-disease/index.html.

fleas have tripled in the U.S.: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Illnesses from Mosquito, Tick, and Flea Bites Increasing in the U.S.,” May 1, 2018, www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0501-vs-vector-borne.html.

encountering ticks for the first time: Avichai Scher and Lauren Dunn, “ ‘Citizen Scientists’ Take On Growing Threat of Tick-Borne Diseases,” NBC News, July 12, 2018, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/citizen-scientists-take-growing-threat-tick-borne-diseases-n890996.

winter ticks helped drop the moose population: Center for Biological Diversity, “Saving the Midwestern Moose,” www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/midwestern_moose/index.html.

90,000 engorged ticks: Katie Burton, “Climate-Change Triggered Ticks Causing Rise in ‘Ghost Moose,’ ” Geographical, November 27, 2018, http://geographical.co.uk/nature/wildlife/item/3008-ghost-moose.

a million yet-to-be-discovered viruses: Dennis Carroll et al., “The Global Virome Project,” Science 359, no. 6378 (February 2018): pp. 872–74, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap7463.

More than 99 percent: Nathan Collins, “Stanford Study Indicates That More than 99 Percent of the Microbes Inside Us Are Unknown to Science,” Stanford News, August 22, 2017, https://news.stanford.edu/2017/08/22/nearly-microbes-inside-us-unknown-science.

the case of the saiga: Ed Yong, “Why Did Two-Thirds of These Weird Antelope Suddenly Drop Dead?” The Atlantic, January 17, 2018.

nearly two-thirds of the global population: Richard A. Kock et al., “Saigas on the Brink: Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Factors Influencing Mass Mortality Events,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao2314.

Economic Collapse

“Whoever says Industrial Revolution”: Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution (New York: The New Press, 1999), p. 34.

about one percentage point: Solomon Hsiang et al., “Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States,” Science 356, no. 6345 (June 2017): 1362–69, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4369.

23 percent loss in per capita: Marshall Burke et al., “Global Non-Linear Effect of Temperature on Economic Production,” Nature 527 (October 2015): pp. 235–39, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15725.

There is a 51 percent chance: Marshall Burke, “Economic Impact of Climate Change on the World,” http://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php.

a team led by Thomas Stoerk: Thomas Stoerk et al., “Recommendations for Improving the Treatment of Risk and Uncertainty in Economic Estimates of Climate Impacts in the Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report,” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 12, no. 2 (August 2018): pp. 371–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/rey005.

global boom of the early 1960s: World Bank, “GDP Growth (Annual %),” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG.

There are places that benefit: Burke, “Economic Impact of Climate Change,” http://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php.

India alone, one study proposed: Katharine Ricke et al., “Country-Level Social Cost of Carbon,” Nature Climate Change 8 (September 2018): pp. 895–900, http://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0282-y.

800 million: World Bank, “South Asia’s Hotspots: Impacts of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards” (Washington, D.C., 2018), p. xi.

dragged into extreme poverty: World Bank Group’s Climate Change and Development Series, “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty” (Washington, D.C., 2016), p. xi, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/22787/9781464806735.pdf.

chronic flooding by 2100: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for U.S. Coastal Real Estate” (Cambridge, MA, 2018), p. 5, www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/sea-level-rise-chronic-floods-and-us-coastal-real-estate-implications.

$30 billion in New Jersey: Union of Concerned Scientists, “New Study Finds 251,000 New Jersey Homes Worth $107 Billion Will Be at Risk from Tidal Flooding,” June 18, 2018, www.ucsusa.org/press/2018/new-study-finds-251000-new-jersey-homes-worth-107-billion-will-be-risk-tidal-flooding#.W-o1FehKg2x.

which is now commonplace: Zach Wichter, “Too Hot to Fly? Climate Change May Take a Toll on Flying,” The New York Times, June 20, 2017.

Every round-trip plane ticket: Dirk Notz and Julienne Stroeve, “Observed Arctic Sea-Ice Loss Directly Follows Anthropogenic CO₂ Emission,” Science 354, no. 6313 (November 2016): pp. 747–50, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag2345.

From Switzerland to Finland: Olav Vilnes et al., “From Finland to Switzerland—Firms Cut Output Amid Heatwave,” Montel News, July 27, 2018, www.montelnews.com/en/story/from-finland-to-switzerland--firms-cut-output-amid-heatwave/921390.

670 million lost power: Jim Yardley and Gardiner Harris, “Second Day of Power Failures Cripples Wide Swath of India,” The New York Times, July 31, 2012.

13 degrees Celsius: Burke, “Global Non-Linear Effect of Temperature,” https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15725; author interview with Marshall Burke.

Already-hot countries: World Bank, “South Asia’s Hotspots.”

up to 20 percent: Hsiang, “Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change,” https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4369.

“economic ripple effect”: Zhengtao Zhang et al., “Analysis of the Economic Ripple Effect of the United States on the World Due to Future Climate Change,” Earth’s Future 6, no. 6 (June 2018): pp. 828–40, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000839.

negative $26 trillion: The New Climate Economy, “Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times” (Washington, D.C.: Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, September 2018), p. 8, https://newclimateeconomy.report/2018.

growth consequences of some scenarios: Marshall Burke et al., “Large Potential Reduction in Economic Damages Under U.N. Mitigation Targets,” Nature 557 (May 2018): pp. 549–53, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0071-9.

Climate Conflict

for every half degree of warming: Solomon M. Hsiang et al., “Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict,” Science 341, no. 6151 (September 2013), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1235367.

elevated Africa’s risk of conflict: Tamma A. Carleton and Solomon M. Hsiang, “Social and Economic Impacts of Climate,” Science 353, no. 6304 (September 2016), http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad9837.

393,000 additional deaths: Marshall B. Burke et al., “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 49 (December 2009): pp. 20670–74, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0907998106. This would represent a 54 percent increase.

The drowning of American navy bases: Union of Concerned Scientists, “The U.S. Military on the Front Lines of Rising Seas” (Cambridge, MA, 2016), www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/sea-level-rise-flooding-us-military-bases#.W-pKUuhKg2x.

its islands will be underwater: “We show that, on the basis of current greenhouse-gas emission rates, the nonlinear interactions between sea-level rise and wave dynamics over reefs will lead to the annual wave-driven overwash of most atoll islands by the mid-21st century. This annual flooding will result in the islands becoming uninhabitable because of frequent damage to infrastructure and the inability of their freshwater aquifers to recover between overwash events.” Curt D. Storlazzi et al., “Most Atolls Will Be Uninhabitable by the Mid-21st Century Because of Sea-Level Rise Exacerbating Wave-Driven Flooding,” Science Advances 4, no. 4 (April 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aap9741.

the world’s largest nuclear waste site: Kim Wall, Coleen Jose, and Jan Henrik Hinzel, “The Poison and the Tomb: One Family’s Journey to Their Contaminated Home,” Mashable, February 25, 2018.

From Boko Haram to ISIS: Katharina Nett and Lukas Rüttinger, “Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming Climate: Analysing the Links Between Climate Change and Non-State Armed Groups,” Climate Diplomacy (Berlin: Adelphi, October 2016).

23 percent of conflict: Carl-Friedrich Schleussner et al., “Armed-Conflict Risks Enhanced by Climate-Related Disasters in Ethnically Fractionalized Countries,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 33 (August 2016): pp. 9216–21, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601611113.

“extreme risk”: Verisk Maplecroft, “Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas 2015” (Bath, UK, October 2014), www.maplecroft.com/portfolio/new-analysis/2014/10/29/climate-change-and-lack-food-security-multiply-risks-conflict-and-civil-unrest-32-countries-maplecroft.

What accounts for the relationship: Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011).

the forced migration that can result: Rafael Reuveny, “Climate Change–Induced Migration and Violent Conflict,” Political Geography 26, no. 6 (August 2007): pp. 656–73, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.05.001.

seventy million displaced: Adrian Edwards, “Forced Displacement at Record 68.5 Million,” UNHCR: The U.N. Refugee Agency, June 19, 2018, www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/stories/2018/6/5b222c494/forced-displacement-record-685-million.html.

Egypt, Akkadia, Rome: William Wan, “Ancient Egypt’s Rulers Mishandled Climate Disasters. Then the People Revolted,” The Washington Post, October 17, 2017; H. M. Cullen et al., “Climate Change and the Collapse of the Akkadian Empire: Evidence from the Deep Sea,” Geology 28, no. 4 (April 2000): pp. 379–82; Kyle Harper, “How Climate Change and Disease Helped the Fall of Rome,” Aeon, December 15, 2017, https://aeon.co/ideas/how-climate-change-and-disease-helped-the-fall-of-rome.

six categories: Center for Climate and Security, “Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene” (Washington, D.C., June 2017), pp. 12–17, https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/1_eroding-sovereignty.pdf.

linguist Steven Pinker: For Pinker’s case for the world’s improvement, see Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2012); for his argument about why we can’t appreciate that improvement, see Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018).

increases violent crime rates: Leah H. Schinasi and Ghassan B. Hamra, “A Time Series Analysis of Associations Between Daily Temperature and Crime Events in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Journal of Urban Health 94, no. 6 (December 2017): pp. 892–900, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11524-017-0181-y.

swearing on social media: Patrick Baylis, “Temperature and Temperament: Evidence from a Billion Tweets” (Energy Institute at Haas working paper, November 2015), https://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/research/papers/WP265.pdf.

a major league pitcher: Richard P. Larrick et al., “Temper, Temperature, and Temptation,” Psychological Sciences 22, no. 4 (February 2011): pp. 423–28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611399292.

the longer drivers will honk: Douglas T. Kenrick et al., “Ambient Temperature and Horn Honking: A Field Study of the Heat/Aggression Relationship,” Environment and Behavior (March 1986), https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916586182002.

police officers are more likely to fire: Aldert Vrij et al., “Aggression of Police Officers as a Function of Temperature: An Experiment with the Fire Arms Training System,” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 4, no. 5 (December 1994): pp. 365–70, https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2450040505.

an additional 22,000 murders: Matthew Ranson, “Crime, Weather, and Climate Change,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 67, no. 3 (May 2014): pp. 274–302, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2013.11.008.

every single crime category: Jackson G. Lu et al., “Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior,” Psychological Science 29, no. 3 (February 2018): pp. 340–55, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617735807.

“food insecure”: Nett and Rüttinger, “Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime,” p. 37.

organized crime…exploded: Ibid., p. 39.

Sicilian mafia was produced by drought: Daron Acemoglu, Giuseppe De Feo, and Giacomo De Luca, “Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia,” VOX CEPR Policy Portal, March 2, 2018, https://voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-sicilian-mafia.

fifth-highest homicide rate: Nett and Rüttinger, “Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime,” p. 35.

second most dangerous country in the world for children: UNICEF, Hidden in Plain Sight: A Statistical Analysis of Violence Against Children (New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, 2014), p. 35, http://files.unicef.org/publications/files/Hidden_in_plain_sight_statistical_analysis_EN_3_Sept_2014.pdf.

could make both of them ungrowable: Pablo Imbach et al., “Coupling of Pollination Services and Coffee Suitability from Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 39 (September 2017): pp. 10438–42, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617940114; Martina K. Linnenluecke et al., “Implications of Climate Change for the Sugarcane Industry,” WIREs Climate Change 9, no. 1 (January–February 2018), https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.498.

“Systems”

22 million of them: “In Photos: Climate Change, Disasters and Displacement,” UNHCR: The U.N. Refugee Agency, January 1, 2015, www.unhcr.org/en-us/climate-change-and-disasters.html.

60,000 climate migrants: Emily Schmall and Frank Bajak, “FEMA Sees Trailers Only as Last Resort After Harvey, Irma,” Associated Press, September 10, 2017, https://apnews.com/7716fb84835b48808839fbc888e96fb7.

the evacuation of nearly 7 million: Greg Allen, “Lessons from Hurricane Irma: When to Evacuate and When to Shelter in Place,” NPR, June 1, 2018, www.npr.org/2018/06/01/615293318/lessons-from-hurricane-irma-when-to-evacuate-and-when-to-shelter-in-place.

13 million Americans: Andrew D. King and Luke J. Harrington, “The Inequality of Climate Change from 1.5 to 2°C of Global Warming,” Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 10 (May 2018): pp. 5030–33, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078430.

greatest in the world’s least developed: Ibid.

In 2011, a single heat wave: Katinka X. Ruthrof et al., “Subcontinental Heat Wave Triggers Terrestrial and Marine, Multi-Taxa Responses,” Scientific Reports 8 (August 2018): p. 13094, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31236-5.

“current and existential national security risk”: Parliament of Australia, “Implications of Climate Change for Australia’s National Security, Final Report, Chapter 2,” www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/Nationalsecurity/Final%20Report/c02; Ben Doherty, “Climate Change an ‘Existential Security Risk’ to Australia, Senate Inquiry Says.” The Guardian, May 17, 2018.

More than 140 million: World Bank, Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration (Washington, D.C., 2018), p. xix, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461.

as many as a billion migrants: International Organization for Migration, “Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidence,” United Nations (Geneva, 2009), p. 43.

more than two-thirds of outbreaks: Frank C. Curriero et al., “The Association Between Extreme Precipitation and Waterborne Disease Outbreaks in the United States, 1948–1994,” American Journal of Public Health 91, no. 8 (August 2001), https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.91.8.1194.

more than 400,000 in Milwaukee: William R. Mac Kenzie et al., “A Massive Outbreak in Milwaukee of Cryptosporidium Infection Transmitted Through the Public Water Supply,” The New England Journal of Medicine 331 (July 1994): pp. 161–67, https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199407213310304.

in Vietnam, those who passed: Thuan Q. Thai and Evangelos M. Falaris, “Child Schooling, Child Health, and Rainfall Shocks: Evidence from Rural Vietnam” (Max Planck Institute working paper, September 2011), www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2011-011.pdf.

In India, the same cycle-of-poverty pattern: Santosh Kumar, Ramona Molitor, and Sebastian Vollmer, “Children of Drought: Rainfall Shocks and Early Child Health in Rural India” (working paper, 2014); Santosh Kumar and Sebastian Vollmer, “Drought and Early Childhood Health in Rural India,” Population and Development Review (2016).

diminishing cognitive ability: R. K. Phalkey et al., “Systematic Review of Current Efforts to Quantify the Impacts of Climate Change on Undernutrition,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 33 (August 2015): pp. E4522–29, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1409769112; Charmian M. Bennett and Sharon Friel, “Impacts of Climate Change on Inequities in Child Health,” Children 1, no. 3 (December 2014): pp. 461–73, https://doi.org/10.3390/children1030461; Iffat Ghani et al., “Climate Change and Its Impact on Nutritional Status and Health of Children,” British Journal of Applied Science and Technology 21, no. 2 (2017): pp. 1–15, https://doi.org/10.9734/BJAST/2017/33276; Kristina Reinhardt and Jessica Fanzo, “Addressing Chronic Malnutrition Through Multi-Sectoral, Sustainable Approaches,” Frontiers in Nutrition 1, no. 13 (August 2014), https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2014.00013.

In Ecuador, climate damage: Ram Fishman et al., “Long-Term Impacts of High Temperatures on Economic Productivity” (George Washington University Institute for International Economic Policy working paper, October 2015), https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/gwiwpaper/2015-18.htm.

measurable declines: Adam Isen et al., “Relationship Between Season of Birth, Temperature Exposure, and Later Life Well-Being,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 51 (December 2017): pp. 13447–52, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702436114.

An enormous study in Taiwan: C. R. Jung et al., “Ozone, Particulate Matter, and Newly-Diagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease,” Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 44, no. 2 (2015): pp. 573–84, https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-140855.

Similar patterns: Emily Underwood, “The Polluted Brain,” Science 355, no. 6323 (January 2017): pp. 342–45, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.355.6323.342.

“Want to fight climate change?”: Damian Carrington, “Want to Fight Climate Change? Have Fewer Children,” The Guardian, July 12, 2017.

“Add this to the list of decisions”: Maggie Astor, “No Children Because of Climate Change? Some People Are Considering It,” The New York Times, February 5, 2018.

a half of all those exposed: Janna Trombley et al., “Climate Change and Mental Health,” American Journal of Nursing 117, no. 4 (April 2017): pp. 44–52, https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000515232.51795.fa.

In England, flooding: M. Reacher et al., “Health Impacts of Flooding in Lewes,” Communicable Disease and Public Health 7, no. 1 (March 2004): pp. 39–46.

aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Mary Alice Mills et al., “Trauma and Stress Response Among Hurricane Katrina Evacuees,” American Journal of Public Health 97 (April 2007): pp. S116-23, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2006.086678.

Wildfires, curiously: Grant N. Marshall et al., “Psychiatric Disorders Among Adults Seeking Emergency Disaster Assistance After a Wildland-Urban Interface Fire,” Psychiatric Services 58, no. 4 (April 2007): pp. 509–14, https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2007.58.4.509.

“I don’t know of a single scientist”: Kevin J. Doyle and Lise Van Susteren, The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States: And Why the U.S. Mental Health Care System Is Not Adequately Prepared (Merrifield, VA: National Wildlife Federation, 2012), p. 19, www.nwf.org/~/media/PDFs/Global-Warming/Reports/Psych_Effects_Climate_Change_Full_3_23.ashx.

“climate depression”: Madeleine Thomas, “Climate Depression Is Real, Just Ask a Scientist,” Grist, October 28, 2014, https://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-depression-is-for-real-just-ask-a-scientist.

“environmental grief”: Jordan Rosenfeld, “Facing Down ‘Environmental Grief,’ ” Scientific American, July 21, 2016.

Hurricane Andrew hit Florida: Ernesto Caffo and Carlotta Belaise, “Violence and Trauma: Evidence-Based Assessment and Intervention in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review,” in The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: An Area of Global Neglect, ed. Helmut Rehmschmidt et al. (West Sussex, Eng.: Wiley, 2007), p. 141.

soldiers returning from war: “PTSD: A Growing Epidemic,” NIH MedlinePlus 4, no. 1 (2009): pp. 10–14, https://medlineplus.gov/magazine/issues/winter09/articles/winter09pg10-14.html.

One especially detailed study: Armen K. Goenjian et al., “Posttraumatic Stress and Depressive Reactions Among Nicaraguan Adolescents After Hurricane Mitch,” American Journal of Psychiatry 158, no. 5 (May 2001): pp. 788–94, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.158.5.788.

both the onset and the severity: Haris Majeed and Jonathan Lee, “The Impact of Climate Change on Youth Depression and Mental Health,” The Lancet 1, no. 3 (June 2017): pp.E94–95, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(17)30045-1.

Rising temperature and humidity: S. Vida, “Relationship Between Ambient Temperature and Humidity and Visits to Mental Health Emergency Departments in Quebec,” Psychiatric Services 63, no. 11 (November 2012): pp. 1150–53, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201100485.

spikes in proper inpatient admissions: Alana Hansen et al., “The Effect of Heat Waves on Mental Health in a Temperate Australian City,” Environmental Health Perspectives 116, no. 10 (October 2008): pp. 1369–75, https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.11339.

Schizophrenics, especially: Roni Shiloh et al., “A Significant Correlation Between Ward Temperature and the Severity of Symptoms in Schizophrenia Inpatients: A Longitudinal Study,” European Neuropsychopharmacology 17, no. 6–7 (May–June 2007): pp. 478–82, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2006.12.001.

mood disorders, anxiety disorders: Hansen, “The Effect of Heat Waves on Mental Health,” https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.11339.

Each increase of a single degree: Marshall Burke et al., “Higher Temperatures Increase Suicide Rates in the United States and Mexico,” Nature Climate Change 8 (July 2018): pp. 723–29, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0222-x.

59,000 suicides: Tamma Carleton, “Crop-Damaging Temperatures Increase Suicide Rates in India,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences 114, no. 33 (August 2017): pp. 8746–51, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1701354114.