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Loading... A Short History of the Future: Surviving the 2030 Spikeby Colin Mason
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Although Mason notes in the introduction that he is trying to cover enough ground in this book while still writing for the layperson, meaning that he will not delve deeply into details of problems, I found this to be quite disappointing. His short chapter on science, for example, says that science must above all be pursued only when useful for the world's purposes, but does not explain how "usefulness" can be determined in advance of actual scientific experimentation. He leaps from issue to issue, idea to idea very quickly, and too quickly for my own liking. I skipped whole chapters that didn't interest me (the one on religion, for example), because I thought that Mason's proposed solutions would not even be worth reading, due to his oversimplification. He suggests that we simply need to be on the same philosophical page to easily implement solutions, and in no way addresses the divergence of will, opinion, or culture as possible barriers to this common understanding. He makes loose connections between different problems, and I often had problems following his train of thought. In the end, this book didn't spark my imagination. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Has the future a future? Are we bringing history to an end? Observing any one of several individual but critical trends suggests that, without rapid and positive action, history may have only a very short way to run. Whether it is the growth of world population, of greenhouse gas concentrations and the accelerating rate of climate change, the running down of oil and natural gas reserves, growing shortages of fresh water for agriculture, industry and domestic use, or the increasing difficulty in controlling epidemic diseases � we are facing a mounting global crisis that will peak in less than a generation, around the year 2030. Taken together, these trends point to a potentially apocalyptic period, if not for the planet itself then certainly for human societies and for humankind.In this compelling book, and update to The 2030 Spike, Colin Mason explains in clear and irrefutable terms what is going on � largely below the surface of our daily or weekly news bulletins. The picture he paints is stark, and yet it is not bleak. Being forewarned, we are forearmed, and he draws on his own extensive political experience to describe how much we can do as individuals, and above all collectively, not merely to avert crisis but to engineer thoroughgoing change that can usher in genuinely sustainable and valuable alternatives to the way we live now. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.49Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Social change Social forecastsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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