Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval

Product Information

We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken. The number of migrants has doubled globally over the past decade, and the issue of what to do about rapidly increasing populations of displaced people will only become greater and more urgent as the planet heats. Gaia Vince calmly — without drum-banging or hand-wringing — sets forth likely consequences and end-of-century projections for our rapidly changing planet. While the climate catastrophe is finally getting the attention it deserves, the inevitability of mass migration has been largely ignored. Ice melt and coral reef loss are already dangerously accelerating: solar reflectivity, such as cloud brightening, should be deployed without delay, and other technologies to reduce temperatures should be explored.

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. 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. She takes us on a tour of cutting-edge technologies – from mats made of algae that float on the ocean and can be used to grow crops, to particles that can be injected into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation – while remaining clear about their limitations. With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. The Neukölln neighbourhood of Berlin, for instance, welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from Syria’s brutal civil war, creating new jobs and economic opportunities.

Millions of refugees from Ukraine have been accepted by European countries that simultaneously claim they cannot possibly cope with the influx of smaller numbers across the Mediterranean. However, China has more successfully managed the flow of about 400 million people into its cities over the past three decades through huge construction and infrastructure programmes. 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. This means having the courage to envision a different way of being a human: in effect, unsticking people from their fixed abodes and setting them free to roam, free to seek the safe places.

In Nomad Century, Vince provides, for the first time, an examination of the most pressing question facing humanity. In November 2017 the people of Zimbabwe took to the streets in an unprecedented alliance with the military. This migration has already begun – we have all seen the streams of people fleeing drought-hit areas in Latin America, Africa and Asia where farming and other rural livelihoods have become impossible. Unfortunately, the same politicians who are failing to deal properly with migration are the same ones we are depending on to avoid dangerous climate breakdown. T he OECD Forum Network is a space for experts and thought leaders—from around the world and all parts of society— to discuss and develop solutions now and for the future.

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. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall. 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. Nomad Century is a landmark work – terrifying in its message and urgency, but ultimately empowering in its conviction about a path forward. 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.