Elemental: The New Geography of Climate Change and How We Survive It
On sale
25th February 2027
Price: £12.99
‘An extraordinary mastery of geopolitics, combining years on the ground in the most challenging places, a raw instinct for politics and a deep ethical concern for the world in the face of climate catastrophe. A masterpiece.’ – RORY STEWART
‘A powerful, passionate and utterly convincing book.’ – LORD PETER RICKETTS
With over 30 years’ experience in conflict zones and fragile states, Arthur Snell travels from the heat of the Sahel to the Arctic Circle to show how climate change is coinciding with a breakdown in geopolitical order, increasing conflict and economic crises.
Within our lifetimes, rising temperatures, sea levels and scarcity will inevitably drive both conflict and mass migration globally. Natural disasters and the battle for rare minerals that are essential to clean energy will shake the established world order to its core within this century. When the rain wrecks India’s ability to grow rice, the heat makes building impossible in Saudi Arabia, wildfires rage through America’s most populated regions, and in Russia huge areas of highly fertile land are exposed by the melting ice, what will living on a warmer planet actually look like?
Here, for the very first time, historian and former British diplomat Arthur Snell delivers a comprehensive account of the geopolitics of climate change. Through four sections – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – Elemental blends reportage with analysis and interviews with key experts, policymakers and politicians, to reveal the turbulent future we face – and the choices we need to make to avert disaster.
‘A powerful, passionate and utterly convincing book.’ – LORD PETER RICKETTS
With over 30 years’ experience in conflict zones and fragile states, Arthur Snell travels from the heat of the Sahel to the Arctic Circle to show how climate change is coinciding with a breakdown in geopolitical order, increasing conflict and economic crises.
Within our lifetimes, rising temperatures, sea levels and scarcity will inevitably drive both conflict and mass migration globally. Natural disasters and the battle for rare minerals that are essential to clean energy will shake the established world order to its core within this century. When the rain wrecks India’s ability to grow rice, the heat makes building impossible in Saudi Arabia, wildfires rage through America’s most populated regions, and in Russia huge areas of highly fertile land are exposed by the melting ice, what will living on a warmer planet actually look like?
Here, for the very first time, historian and former British diplomat Arthur Snell delivers a comprehensive account of the geopolitics of climate change. Through four sections – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – Elemental blends reportage with analysis and interviews with key experts, policymakers and politicians, to reveal the turbulent future we face – and the choices we need to make to avert disaster.
Reviews
A powerful, passionate and utterly convincing book, which brings a diplomat's experience to bear on why climate change is driving conflict and disorder in our world and what can still be done to reverse these alarming trends.
An extraordinary mastery of geopolitics, combining years on the ground in the most challenging places, a raw instinct for politics and a deep ethical concern for the world in the face of climate catastrophe. A masterpiece.
A terrific, highly readable, clear-eyed assessment of the ways a hotter climate will dramatically upend the comforting certainties of our modern world. Essential analysis for policymakers and excellent preparation for all of us who have a stake in the new reality we're making.
Which nations will rise, and which will fall, in our climate change-affected future remains uncertain, but Elemental is essential reading for anyone interested in these questions
Connects environmental crisis to geopolitics with urgent clarity.
Enlightening but often shocking. . . Although much of what he chronicles in Elemental is alarming, Snell is no doom-mongering pessimist. He offers a vision of the future in which change can be good news
I loved [it] . . . incredibly fascinating.
A tour de force.
Ambitious . . . This is an unblinking analysis of the state of the global order as the climate crisis begins to bite.