Climate Action: Uninhabitable Earth

Just how bad will it get if the world fails to get to grips with climate change?

On day two of the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, Justin Rowlatt speaks to David Wallace-Wells, author of the apocalyptic book Uninhabitable Earth, which lays out the dire predictions of climatologists for the coming decades if humanity continues to put ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere unabated.

Yet despite the potentially terrifying outlook, it remains very difficult to motivate politicians and the public to take meaningful action to cut emissions. Why is that, and how might that change? Kelly Fielding is a social psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, and has some of the answers.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Picture: Dead bumblebee from the cover of Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells; Credit: FXseydlbast/Getty Images)