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An urgent investigation of the most underreported, seismic consequence of climate change- how it will force us to change where - and how - we live
We are facing a species emergency. With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. From Bangladesh to Sudan to the western United States, and in cities from Cardiff to New Orleans to Shanghai, the quadruple threat of drought, heat, wildfires and flooding will utterly reshape Earth's human geography in the coming decades.
In this rousing call to arms, Royal Society Science Book Prize-winning author Gaia Vince describes how we can plan for and manage this unavoidable climate migration while we restore the planet to a fully habitable state. Drawing on a wealth of eye-opening data and original reporting, Vince shows that migration is not the problem - it's the solution. We will need to move northwards as a species, into the habitable fringes on Europe, Asia and Canadas Canada and the greening Arctic circle.
While the climate catastrophe is finally getting the attention it deserves, the inevitability of mass migration has been largely ignored. In Nomad Century, Vince provides, for the first time, an examination of the most pressing question facing humanity.
An urgent investigation of the most underreported, seismic consequence of climate change- how it will force us to change where - and how - we live
We are facing a species emergency. With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. From Bangladesh to Sudan to the western United States, and in cities from Cardiff to New Orleans to Shanghai, the quadruple threat of drought, heat, wildfires and flooding will utterly reshape Earth's human geography in the coming decades.
In this rousing call to arms, Royal Society Science Book Prize-winning author Gaia Vince describes how we can plan for and manage this unavoidable climate migration while we restore the planet to a fully habitable state. Drawing on a wealth of eye-opening data and original reporting, Vince shows that migration is not the problem - it's the solution. We will need to move northwards as a species, into the habitable fringes on Europe, Asia and Canadas Canada and the greening Arctic circle.
While the climate catastrophe is finally getting the attention it deserves, the inevitability of mass migration has been largely ignored. In Nomad Century, Vince provides, for the first time, an examination of the most pressing question facing humanity.
Gaia Vince is an honorary senior research fellow at UCL and a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has appeared in the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. Her research takes her across the world- she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene.
With the government's migration policy in such appalling disarray,
Gaia Vince's Nomad Century has to be the most timely book of the
year. Vince's calm, compassionate and authoritative explanation of
the inevitability of migration is essential reading... There should
be a copy on every desk in Whitehall
*New Statesman*
A tour de force... Nomad Century should be on the reading list of
anyone and everyone in any position of power. It is not simply a
future atlas of human geography showing where will be habitable and
for how many, but a hard-hitting must-read on how we will need to
live in the coming decades to secure the long-term survival of
humankind
*Financial Times*
Essential, bold and clear-sighted... I have yet to read a book that
takes the question of how to survive the coming decades more
seriously
*Prospect*
A powerful, provocative argument
*Nature*
After a summer of climate catastrophes, not least the appalling
floods that left a third of Pakistan under water at the end of
August, now should be the moment to consider radical solutions
*New Statesman*
Engaging and constructive... Vince leaves the reader with more than
a few sparks of hope
*Herald*
Gaia Vince's new book should be read not just by every politician,
but by every person on the planet, because it lays out, much more
clearly than any existing scientific assessment, the world we are
creating through global heating... Passionate and powerful
*Observer*
Powerful... It holds much wisdom with which to tackle the
challenges of our turbulent century... Nomad Century is a visionary
book, an attempt to imagine how climate change might reshape our
notions of what is politically possible
*The Times*
Nomad Century is a landmark work - terrifying in its message and
urgency, but ultimately empowering in its conviction about a path
forward. Gaia Vince lays bare the scale of the challenge before us,
and the grand ideas that will be needed to meet it. We must be
ready; this book shows us how
*Ed Yong*
Once again Gaia Vince demonstrates that she is one of the finest
science writers at work today
*Bill Bryson*
The climate crisis already has millions of people on the move, and
that number will steadily grow higher till it breaks the political
structures of the planet - unless, as the author suggests, we start
now to remake those structures so they can cope, and indeed
benefit, from the flow of humans that is now inevitable. An
important and provocative start to a crucial conversation
*Bill McKibben*
This book is a rather astounding addition to a growing body of
thought that suggests the twenty-first century is going to include,
and even require, lots of human migration-and that handled
correctly, this could be part of a good adaptation to the climate
and biosphere crisis we are now entering. What Vince gives us here
is some cognitive mapping to understand the situation and see a way
forward
*Kim Stanley Robinson*
Vince's perspectives and proposals are refreshing in a world where
a Don't-Look-Up-style denial is solidly in place... If this book
results in even a smidgeon more sympathy for the huge numbers of
people being forced away from their homes, that will be a great
thing
*Irish Times*
Nomad Century is the most important book I imagine I'll ever read.
Gaia Vince calmly -- without drum-banging or hand-wringing -- sets
forth likely consequences and end-of-century projections for our
rapidly changing planet. It'll knock you flat. But before you hit
the ground, she hands over an impressively detailed survival plan:
supporting radical migration from newly uninhabitable regions,
rethinking urban structures and food practices, restoring climate.
The book is heavily researched, but Gaia's clean, intelligent prose
propels the reader
*Mary Roach*
Terrifying, yet strangely hopeful and immensely important. I'm not
sure if you can 'love' a book about our precarious future but this
is essential reading. Nomad Century brings together the two most
pressing issues of our time: the climate emergency and migration.
Every single one of us will be affected by this - and therefore we
should all read this book. It's packed with facts, solutions and
even some optimism ... so, yes, maybe I actually do 'love' it
*Andrea Wulf*
Brilliant. The most far-sighted book on migration I have read. Gaia
Vince doesn't waste a sentence. Read this to understand our
future
*Henry Mance*
Nomad Century will broaden your horizon when thinking about the
biggest humanitarian crisis of known history. A passionate plea for
humankind
*Ece Temelkuran*
Vince sounds the air raid siren for humanity, then offers a
thrilling path forward. A harrowing then inspiring read
*Musa Okwonga*
Rigorously researched, accessibly written and illuminating...
Vince's book makes a persuasive case that we can meet the momentous
tasks ahead
*Geographical*
The UN's International Organisation for Migration predicts as many
as 1.5 billion environmental migrants by 2050, with many fleeing
drought, flood and wildfire. The coming together of two hot-button
issues - the climate crisis and migration - is the basis for Nomad
Century (Allen Lane) by Gaia Vince, an essential book on how
humanity must adapt as the planet warms and some regions become
uninhabitable. The question, she says, is whether the transition
will be managed calmly or whether "hunger and conflict will erupt -
an unconscionable outcome that would endanger us all"
*New Statesman*
After a year in which wildfires, storms and floods have driven
thousands from their homes, this book's warning about a rising
population of climate migrants has a chilling resonance. The
survival solutions it offers - such as global freedom of movement -
are not entirely persuasive. But the case it makes for fresh
thinking is utterly convincing
*Financial Times*
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has said that she dreams of
sending planes full of migrants to Rwanda. But policymakers are in
denial about the number of people who will be forced to move as the
impacts of climate change become more profound, argues the
scientist Gaia Vince in Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate
Upheaval (John Murray). She calls for us all to step up and manage
migration humanely
*New Statesman*
In the opening chapters of Nomad Century, science writer and
broadcaster Gaia Vince paints a stark picture of what the world is
likely to look like if global average temperatures rise 4°C above
pre-industrial levels. This isn't a distant or unrealistic
prospect: climate models suggest we're currently heading towards a
3°C-4°C rise by the end of the century - less than three
generations away. In this rigorously researched, accessibly written
and illuminating book, Vince examines what these changes will
entail and how we should respond, ending with an eight-point
'manifesto' to guide us. While not shying away from the scale of
the challenges, she doesn't give in to fatalism or inertia: '[We]
are facing a species emergency - but we can manage it
*Geographical*
My first choice is Nomad Century by Gaia Vince, a brilliant and
disturbing analysis of how climate change will affect the world's
migration patterns. Vince argues that, instead of being afraid, we
should embrace these new migratory movements. After all, she says,
civilisations have all been built on the backs of migration. It is
both a disturbing and a hopeful read
*Politics Home*
Got to be one of the most important books in the world today
*Max Porter, author of SHY*
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