Earth at 2°C hotter will be horrific. Now here’s what 4°C will look like.
This is what the world will be like if we do not act on climate change.
- The best-case scenario of climate change is that world gets just 2°C hotter, which scientists call the "threshold of catastrophe".
- Why is that the good news? Because if humans don't change course now, the planet is on a trajectory to reach 4°C at the end of this century, which would bring $600 trillion in global climate damages, double the warfare, and a refugee crisis 100x worse than the Syrian exodus.
- David Wallace-Wells explains what would happen at an 8°C and even 13°C increase. These predictions are horrifying, but should not scare us into complacency. "It should make us focus on them more intently," he says.
Why not all uncivilized people are barbarians
Oppression causes many people to run for the hills. Literally.
- We often imagine that civilization was formed when people agreed to from societies together and then attracted others out of the wildreness to join them.
- Some historians and anthropologists argue that a huge part of Asia is filled with people who did the opposite.
- If true, the idea could flip our understanding of how states and civilizations form on its head.
4 books on race in America everyone should read
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas shares the books that shaped his life.
- These books, from authors like Toni Morrison and John F. Kennedy, open up a whole new perspective on the American landscape.
- Read Jose Antonio Vargas' groundbreaking essay on life as an undocumented migrant in The New York Times Magazine.
- Jose shared his list of 4 books on race in America everyone should read at a recent ScribdChat in San Francisco
- Vargas' memoir, Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, is out now.
Why the worst part about climate change isn't rising temperatures
The world's getting hotter, and it's getting more volatile. We need to start thinking about how climate change encourages conflict.
- Climate change is usually discussed in terms of how it impacts the weather, but this fails to emphasize how climate change is a "threat multiplier."
- As a threat multiplier, climate change makes already dangerous social and political situations even worse.
- Not only do we have to work to minimize the impact of climate change on our environment, but we also have to deal with how it affects human issues today.
How refugees have the power to change the society they join
What history can teach us about refugees.
In the late 17th century, small bands of refugees began making their way into Spanish Florida. At first, they arrived in small numbers, carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, and without generating much interest. The material demands they might place on the Spanish state were at best modest. Yet these refugees and their experience in Spanish Florida would raise nettlesome political questions. Refugees have a special power to unsettle political communities, one that far outstrips their claim on practical resources.
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