A book recommended by Bill Gates, this book outlines the current global challenges, and suggests where improvements need to be made to avert future disasters. It was written near the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, so lessons learned from that are also included, which was especially interesting to me.
There are a lot of statistics in here, complete with references, so these can help the reader understand the scope of the problems he is describing. However as the author states, it is nearly impossible to predict the future of something complex as “the world” and where it will be in even just a few years, let alone thirty.
With the statistics presented the author takes neither an optimistic or pessimistic view – he vows to remain realistic. In principle this means a more accurate view of the situation, but to me sometimes it felt like listening to a grouchy old man lecturing younger people.
The parts that were the most educational for me were the sections on energy costs for food, the downsides of globalization (and the possibility that the peak of this trend is already past), and the idea that as humans increase their life span they also increase their periods of vulnerability, and there are costs associated with that.
I did feel like this book spent a little too much time on historical reviews of how things became what they are now – but thankfully these were brief enough. My focus coming into the book is where we are now and where we’ll be going – but I guess without some background it is hard to communicate these complex issues.
Next I’m reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
