David Wallace-Wells’ own description of the subject of his new book, at the end of the opening from which I have been quoting:

“What follows is a kaleidoscopic accounting of the human costs of human life continuing as it has for a generation, which will fill up the planet with only more humans—what ongoing global warming spells for public health, for conflict, for politics and food production and pop culture, for urban life and mental health and the way we imagine our own futures as we begin to perceive, all around us, an acceleration of history and the diminishing of possibility that acceleration likely brings. The force of retribution will cascade down to us through nature, but the cost to nature is only one part of the story; we will all be hurting. I may be in the minority in feeling that the world could lose much of what we think of as “nature,” as far as I cared, so long as we could go on living as we have in the world left behind. The problem is, we can’t.”

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (pp. 35-36). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.