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As featured on ITV News and Radio 4's Today programme'This book could not come at a more appropriate moment... Matchless man: hugely important book'Joanna Lumley'A great champion of environmental activism... His extensive travels have given him many insights'Sir Ranulph Fiennes'This is a fabulous book... It's like pumping a mountain stream through your head'Sir Tim SmitA powerful polemic on the major threats facing the world today and how they can be overcome. Our world is facing catastrophes of many kinds, from the climate crisis to global outbreaks of deadly diseases. But could we look back at the collapse of previous civilisations to see what lessons might be learned?The explorer and campaigner Robin Hanbury-Tenison believes we urgently need to tackle the four harbingers of catastrophe:The White Horse of Pestilence and Pandemics – many remote tribal societies have lives that are healthier than ours – what can we learn from them?The Red Horse of War – can we avoid conflict through promoting prosperity and renewable energy for all?The Black Horse of Famine – is now the time to use technology we've had since World War II to influence the weather?The Pale Horse of Death – will geoengineering help to undo the appalling pollution we are inflicting on the planet, especially the oceans?The lessons of Taming The Four Horsemen are clear: if we humans are to survive we need to make transformative changes now.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday DemonNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus ReviewsIt is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation's Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today's.LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD“The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times“Riveting.... Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells's outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist“Potent and evocative.... Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change.... He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology'in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times“The book has potential to be this generation's Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post“The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear.... I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books

The book explores the central question facing humanity today: how can we best survive the ten great existential challenges that are now coming together to confront us? Besides describing these challenges from the latest scientific perspectives, it also outlines and integrates the solutions, both at global and individual level and concludes optimistically. This book brings together in one easy-to-read work the principal issues facing humanity. It is written for the two next generations who will have to deal with the compounding risks they inherit, and which flow from overpopulation, resource pressures and human nature. The author examines ten intersecting areas of activity (mass extinction, resource depletion, WMD, climate change, universal toxicity, food crises, population and urban expansion, pandemic disease, dangerous new technologies and self-delusion) which pose manifest risks to civilization and, potentially, to our species'long-term future. This isn't a book just about problems. It is also about solutions. Every chapter concludes with clear conclusions and consensus advice on what needs to be done at global level —but it also empowers individuals with what they can do for themselves to make a difference. Unlike other books, it offers integrated solutions across the areas of greatest risk. It explains why Homo sapiens is no longer an appropriate name for our species, and what should be done about it.