Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval

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We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken.

Technology will help us, Vince argues, but we must also “shed some of our tribal identities” – such as nationalism – and “embrace a pan-species identity” as citizens of Earth. E xcerpted from Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval by Gaia Vince, published by Penguin . Blood and Oil is the explosive untold story of how Mohammed bin Salman and his entourage grabbed power in the Middle East and acquired a network of Western allies - including well-known US bankers, Hollywood figures, and politicians - all eager to help the charming and crafty crown prince. 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. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions, though vital to the future survival of humanity, are already unlikely to limit global heating to the extent that we avoid further displacement.Gaia Vince’s book Nomad Century, for the first time, promotes the idea of migration as a solution and provides a detailed survival plan suffused with cautious optimism. I make and present science documentaries for radio and television, and I give talks around the world. 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.

Already across the world there has been a mass exodus from the countryside to cities, but unplanned urban development had led to a proliferation of slums and shantytowns. The disaster of the past decade is that rightwing populists have undermined efforts both to mitigate climate change and protect refugees by playing on people’s feelings that political institutions no longer work in their interests. It is, I think, easier to imagine the opposite: that many of us will move thousands of kilometres from home. 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.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. A story of breath-taking dealings that range from Riyadh to London, Paris to America, this is a thrilling and brutal investigation into extreme wealth, one of the world's most decisive and dangerous new leaders, and the bid for Saudi transformation that is reverberating around the world.

There should be a copy on every desk in Whitehall -- Michael Brooks, Books of the Year * New Statesman * A tour de force.Gaia Vince lays bare the scale of the challenge before us, and the grand ideas that will be needed to meet it. Previously, I have held senior editorial positions at the science journal Nature, Nature Climate Change, and New Scientist magazine. 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. 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. 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.