Human Nature
Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A Scientific American Best Book of the Year
A captivating exploration of climate change that uses nine different emotions to better understand the science, history, and future of our evolving planet
Scientist Kate Marvel has seen the world end before, sometimes several times a day. In the computer models she uses to study climate change, it’s easy to simulate rising temperatures, catastrophic outcomes, and bleak futures. But climate change isn’t just happening in those models. It’s happening here, to the only good planet in the universe. It’s happening to us. And she has feelings about that.
Human Nature is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief—but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted.
Hopeful, heartbreaking, and surprisingly funny, Human Nature is a vital, wondrous exploration of how it feels to live in a changing world.
Human Nature is a biography of the Earth in nine emotions:
WonderAngerGuiltFearGriefSurprisePrideHopeLove
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this impassioned debut report, climatologist Marvel uses the emotions engendered by the climate crisis to explore the science of global warming. Reflecting on her anger over inaction in the face of damning evidence, Marvel describes how the warnings of 19th-century scientist Eunice Foote, who was among the first people to realize that rising CO₂ levels would increase global temperatures, were dismissed because she was a woman. Marvel also covers the fear-inducing realities of a warmer planet, explaining that weather stations in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates have recorded combinations of heat and humidity so extreme that sweating can no longer cool the body and even sitting in the shade with an unlimited supply of water couldn't prevent fatal heatstroke. Later chapters offer cautious reasons for hope, as when Marvel argues that a successful mid-20th-century ban on hunting whales for oil shows how legislation might hasten the transition to clean energy. The history and climate science enlighten, and the poignant final chapter, in which Marvel reflects on the beauty of life and humanity's contradictions while comparing her feelings about living with a potentially lethal brain clot to confronting the grim possibilities of climate change, is a bona fide tearjerker. This unique take on the climate crisis stands out.
