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Fewer, richer, greener : prospects for humanity in an age of abundance
\"\"The quality of [his] thinking and [his] writing is...second to none in the world of finance.\"--Jack Bogle, founder, Vanguard \"That great explainer of everything to everybody.\" --Richard Flannery, CEO, The Investment Fund for Foundations Our world is burdened with disappearing economic growth, a deteriorating environment, limited natural resources, and not just too many people, but too many old people. Really? While such pessimism may mark you as a wise soul at the neighborhood cocktail party, it isn't supported by the facts. Yes, there are reasons to worry, as there have always been. But there are far more reasons to be optimistic, as author Laurence Siegel explains in his fascinating look at the future, Fewer, Richer, Greener. The recent dramatic slowing in global population growth will allow prosperity to spread from the developed to the developing world. Prosperity is mostly based on technology in the broadest sense of that word--meaning \"the techniques we use for getting the most out of what we have.\" That technology is cumulative. We have what we had yesterday, plus whatever new technology is developed today. Except in times of massive economic dislocation, the present is better than the past--and the future will be better still. Using narrative, data, biography and interviews with leading thinkers, Fewer, Greener, Richer, traces the history of economic progress and explosres its consequences for human life around the world. We are, as Siegel explains, at the turning point where the economic development of the past 200 years in the first world has begun to spread to the rest of the globe. Using sources ranging from the Old Testament to the latest writings on economics, biology, and philosophy, Siegel tells the story of how we arrived at this point, and lays out a vision for the progress we are about to witness. This future will not be without problems, but we will have the knowledge and technology to solve those problems in ways that would have be unimaginable only a few decades ago\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Fewer, Richer, Greener
How the world has become much better and why optimism is abundantly justified
Why do so many people fear the future? Is their concern justified, or can we look forward to greater wealth and continued improvement in the way we live?
Our world seems to be experiencing stagnant economic growth, climatic deterioration, dwindling natural resources, and an unsustainable level of population growth. The world is doomed, they argue, and there are just too many problems to overcome. But is this really the case? In Fewer, Richer, Greener, author Laurence B. Siegel reveals that the world has improved —and will continue to improve—in almost every dimension imaginable.
This practical yet lighthearted book makes a convincing case for having gratitude for today's world and optimism about the bountiful world of tomorrow. Life has actually improved tremendously. We live in the safest, most prosperous time in all human history. Whatever the metric—food, health, longevity, education, conflict—it is demonstrably true that right now is the best time to be alive. The recent, dramatic slowing in global population growth continues to spread prosperity from the developed to the developing world. Technology is helping billions of people rise above levels of mere subsistence. This technology of prosperity is cumulative and rapidly improving: we use it to solve problems in ways that would have be unimaginable only a few decades ago. An optimistic antidote for pessimism and fear, this book:
* Helps to restore and reinforce our faith in the future
* Documents and explains how global changes impact our present and influence our future
* Discusses the costs and unforeseen consequences of some of the changes occurring in the modern world
* Offers engaging narrative, accurate data and research, and an in-depth look at the best books on the topic by leading thinkers
* Traces the history of economic progress and explores its consequences for human life around the world
Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance is a must-read for anyone who wishes to regain hope for the present and wants to build a better future.
eBook
The collapse of Western civilization
The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and—finally—the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment—the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies—failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called \"carbon combustion complex\" that have turned the practice of science into political fodder. Based on sound scholarship and yet unafraid to speak boldly, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature.
eBook
Age of discovery : navigating the storms of our second renaissance
Now is humanity's best moment. And our most fragile. Global health, wealth and education are booming. Scientific discovery is flourishing. But the same forces that make big gains possible for some of us deliver big losses to others-and tangle us together in ways that make everyone vulnerable. We've been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, redrew all maps of the world, liberated information and shifted Western civilization from the medieval to the early modern era. Such change came at a price: social division, political extremism, economic shocks, pandemics and other unintended consequences of human endeavour. Now is our second Renaissance. In the face of terrorism, Brexit, refugee crises and the global impact of a Trump presidency, we can flourish-if we heed the urgent lessons of history. Age of Discovery, revised and updated for this paperback edition, shows us how.
BOOK
Fewer, Richer, Greener
Intro -- Fewer, Richer, Greener -- Contents -- Foreword -- On Capitalism and Humane True Liberalism -- Apocalypse Now . . . or Apocalypse Not? -- Free Markets and Free Minds -- A Big and Rich Africa? -- Conscious Capitalism -- Perils and Promise of the Future -- Population and the Environment -- Rational Optimism -- Preface -- How I Came to Write This Book -- Acknowledgments -- Part I The Great Betterment -- 1 Right Here, Right Now -- The Charming Little House -- A Tale of Three Authors -- Matt Ridley: How Prosperity Evolves -- Hans Rosling: Poor and Sick to Rich and Healthy -- The World in 1800: Mostly Poor and Sick -- The World in 1948: Maximum Inequality, the End of the Great Divergence -- The World in 2018: The Great Convergence Finally Takes Hold -- Conclusion -- Part II Fewer -- 2 The Population Explosion, Malthus, and the Ghost of Christmas Present -- What Happened to the Population Hockey Stick? -- Falling Birth Rates: Boon or Disaster? -- \"The Paragon of Animals\" -- Malthus's Dismal Theory -- Malthus's Mistake -- From Malthus to Modernism -- The Modern Voice of the Ghost of Christmas Present -- Conclusion -- 3 The Demographic Transition: Running Out of and Into People -- The Demographic Transition and Population Momentum -- Stage 1: Shoemaker and Morning Star -- Stage 2: The Population Explosion Begins -- Stage 3: Toward a New Equilibrium -- Stage 4: Population Stability at a High Level -- Stage 5: The Fertility of the Very Rich -- An Aging and Stabilizing World -- The High-fertility World: A Shrinking Geography, a Growing Population -- Sub-Saharan Africa: The Last Fertility Frontier -- 4 Having Fewer Children: \"People Respond to Incentives\" -- The Low-Fertility World: No Longer the Exception, but the Rule -- Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold-Just Right -- Newcomers to the Low-fertility World -- East Asia, Epicenter of Childlessness.
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The Planet in 2050
In 2050, the billions of people living on Earth have found a way to manage the planetary system effectively. Everyone has access to adequate food, shelter, and clean water. Human health is no longer considered outside of the health of the ecosystems in which people live. Ecological awareness is an integral part of education. People respond effectively to social and environmental hazards, and societies care for the most vulnerable amongst them. The economy, too, has shifted. Carbon dioxide management is under control, and energy efficiency is the norm. The remaining rainforests have been preserved. Coral reefs are recovering. Fish stocks are thriving. Is any of this really possible? How can our complex social and economic systems interact with a complex planetary system undergoing rapid change to create a future we all want?
This book is a contextualised collation of ideas articulated by the 50 participants of the Planet 2050 workshop held in Lund in October 2008, as part of The Planet in 2050, an interdisciplinary Fast Track Initiative of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Participants were selected from academia and the sustainability practice community to give a wide-ranging, multi-cultural, trans-disciplinary set of perspectives.
This collection explores four broad sectoral themes: energy and technologies; development, economies and culture; environment; and land use change. By doing so, this book emphasises the importance of a social dialogue on our collective future, and our responsibility to the Earth. It makes strong statements about what needs to happen to the global economy for a sustainable future and documents a new kind of scholarly discussion, engaging people from diverse knowledge communities in a spirit of exploration and reflexivity. The book provides a focus for dialogue and further study for postgraduates and researchers interested in global change as a multi-faceted, socio-environmental
eBook
The great questions of tomorrow
\"We are on the cusp of a sweeping revolution--one that will change every facet of our lives. The changes ahead will challenge and alter fundamental concepts such as national identity, human rights, money, and markets. In this pivotal, complicated moment, what are the great questions we need to ask to navigate our way forward?\" -- From book jacket.
Book
Election Forecasting for Turbulent Times
Election forecasters face increasing turbulence in their relevant environments, making predictions more uncertain, or at least apparently so. For US presidential contests, economic performance and candidate profiles are central variables in most statistical models. These variables have exhibited large swings recently. Before the 2008 US presidential election, the economy fell into a Great Recession, and the candidate of one of the two major parties was, for the first time, a black man. These unprecedented conditions were trumpeted in the media, with heightened frenzy over the “horse race” question of who was going to win the White House. In the press, many forecasts appeared, taking different forms—polls, models, markets, pundits, to name some—offering a broader range of possible outcomes than ever before. Just looking at the predictions of the statistical modelers alone, we find that for 2008 many teams offered estimates of the incumbent (Republican) vote, ranging over an 11 percentage point spread. At one extreme, Lockerbie (2008) forecast 41.8% while at the other extreme Campbell (2008) forecast 52.7%. Of course, other methodologists offered their own, different, forecasts. The media, in its various forms, added to the hyperbole, aggressively reporting different forecasts on an almost daily basis.
Journal Article