Eric Holthaus > Quotes

“Recent studies have found that our brains keep only a two- to eight-year record of weather extremes. In a world that is rapidly changing, we literally have no frame of reference for how unusual our climate-related experiences are. Climate change is changing who we are, changing our sense of place, and loosening our grasp on reality. It’s no wonder we sometimes feel like we’re losing control.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“Climate change doesn’t always take on such dramatic forms. More often, it’s insidious. Bugs can survive in places they couldn’t before, greatly increasing the threat of tropical diseases, even as far north as Alaska and Greenland. In search of cooler weather, trees, birds, mammals, and other species are creeping up mountain slopes and toward the poles. Spring green-up occurs earlier every year, shifting the timing of thousands of species’ interactions and rapidly shifting growing zones, which throw entire ecosystems dangerously off-balance. Heat waves have become prolonged and deadlier. Wildfire smoke is aggravating chronic illnesses hundreds of miles away from the flames. Air pollution, worsened by fossil fuel burning, kills more than nineteen thousand people a day, making it one of the leading causes of death in nearly every country on Earth. Young people growing up today are seeking treatment for mental health issues in numbers never seen before, in part because they are not always sure they’ll have a livable future.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“Samantha Earle is a philosopher at the University of East Anglia who specializes in liminal spaces. She firmly believes that Western civilization is currently ripe for radical change. Talking with her was the most transformative conversation I had while putting together this book. Philosophers like to speak of an “imaginary,” or a guiding framework, for organizing society. Earle isn’t under any illusions that this process is going to be easy. But just as climate scientists are certain that our current path will lead to inevitable destruction of our planet’s fundamental life-support systems, Earle is certain that our prevailing guiding frameworks for civilization cannot last. “We’re at that time where the problems of the world just can’t be answered by the prevailing imaginary,” she told me. “We are in a time of breakdown.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“The perpetual growth model is simply not built for an era of rapid planetary change. In a world where the richest 85 people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion, and the wealthiest 10% produce 49% of all emissions, it’s not individual choices that are driving climate change. When we realize that rich people have stolen our planet’s habitability for themselves, we will demand revolutionary change.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“We have reached a unique and vulnerable moment in human history: our futures are simultaneously dependent on the actions of others and defined by our personal daily choices. This reality demands that we interact with one another, that we come together—for our own personal survival and the survival of life as we know it on our planet.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“In 2020, there’s a growing realization that there is no choice left but to demand a better world. Humanity is looking extinction in the eye and deciding to thrive instead.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“We must articulate a shared, hopeful vision of the future. We must tear down the current system. We must begin building a new world that works for everyone.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming

“In recent years, about a quarter of the caribou in Russia died due to unseasonably warm winter weather, which transformed the normally soft snow into a sheet of ice, preventing them from accessing the grass below.”
― Eric Holthaus, The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming