Elemental: How We Will Live on a Warming Planet

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.

Author Biography

Arthur Snell is an expert on the interaction between geopolitics and climate change with a degree in History from the University of Oxford. He has over 30 years’ experience in conflict zones and fragile states throughout the Middle East and Africa, and advised governments – including Ukraine during the current conflict – on a range of security- and conflict-related issues. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, the world’s oldest think tank, a former British Ambassador, and has hosted numerous podcasts which have had millions of downloads.