Excerpt from The Future Earth by Eric Holthaus, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Future Earth

Hurricane Maria damaged or destroyed about 30 million trees, inflicting profound and unprecedented changes on the landscape. With the climate warming so quickly, biologists in Puerto Rico think the forests Maria destroyed will never return to their previous diversity. Many of the island's largest and slowest-growing hardwood trees, like tabonuco and balata, suffered the worst damage. Their vast canopies provide habitats for birds, bats, and tree frogs. If future hurricanes are as strong (or even stronger) than Maria, Puerto Rico's forests will eventually feature only smaller and shorter trees that are more resilient to high winds and scouring floods, which will leave local species without shelter. More than a year after the storm made landfall, satellite images showed that the island appeared definitively less green.

The storm of Hurricane Maria still hasn't let up. A full-fledged mental health crisis is ongoing throughout the island, "the largest psychosocial disaster in the United States" according to Joseph Prewitt Diaz, disaster mental health advisor for the American Red Cross. The slow recovery has created a "living emergency," a new normal that permeates daily life—characterized by despair, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress—which is more typical of refugee camps and conflict zones.

None of this was inevitable. None of this was a surprise. What is happening in Puerto Rico is the product of centuries of decisions made within a destructive system. We've known this for centuries, thanks in large part to the people whose voices were too often deemed dangerous or unworthy of our attention. Scientists are now certain that our use of fossil fuels and our destruction of the planet's ecosystems are quickly bringing the future of human civilization into doubt. My goal with this book is to help you imagine your own part in building a better world that works for everyone, regardless of status or class or gender. And to remind you that you were born at exactly the right time to help change everything.

Because we refused to take action for decades, climate change is no longer just about science. It is now, at heart, an issue of justice. The fact that each year we are continuing to set new record highs in greenhouse gas emissions even as our planet is rapidly warming is a shocking symptom of a larger problem in the way our society is structured. An issue of justice, climate change is also a living emergency that touches everyone and every part of society, which makes it impossible to disentangle in any meaningful way the effects of increasingly extreme weather and the unfair system that caused it. The evidence is all around us: we need to embark rapidly on a different path.

But how?

Excerpted from The Future Earth by Eric Holthaus, reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2020.