The Future: Six Drivers of Global
Change is Al Gore’s
twelfth book, his fourth since having lost the presidential election of
2000. I guess I always knew the former
vice president was a pretty smart guy, but his burst of productivity since that
epochal event has surprised both cynics and supporters, I suspect. An academy award and the Nobel Peace Prize -
in the same year, no less? A fortune
valued at $300 million, grown from $2 million in 2000? Co-founder of Generation Investment Management
and Chairman of the Climate Reality Project?
To re-iterate: four books?
DIVORCED
FROM TIPPER??
Talk about
your late bloomer! Perhaps I shouldn’t
have been surprised by The Future, but I do think it stands apart
from his previous work. Where Gore seems
to have “toned down” his prior attempts
at impressing his audience with the seriousness of climate change (I am
purposely avoiding use of the term “dumbed down,” because I think it would be
inaccurate), this time we’re seeing the unabashed geek throwing himself at this
issue – among many - full bore. Gore
knows as much as just about anybody, when it comes to the topics of climate and
global change, and he feels it’s his duty to make sure you are equally well
informed. Brace yourself.
Replete with
diagrams and endnotes, Gore’s latest is not for the faint of heart. He characterizes the now-intimate workings of
the global economy as “Earth, Inc.”: part façade, part nano/molecular
innovation. The Global Mind comes next,
accompanied by yards of jargon like world brain, Moore’s Law, Big Data, Twitter
Earthquake Detector, Global Pulse, etc. The
good, the bad, the cyber – it’s all here.
(A word to the wise? Expect to be
hacked!)
The vacuum
in world leadership left by an ethically faltering United States is
juxtapositioned with the rise of corporate power everywhere. Perhaps most fascinating of all, I learned
that our president of 1876 – Rutherford B. Hayes! – was prescient in
pronouncing “this is a government of the people, by the people and for the
people no longer. It is a government of
corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.” And that was before lobbyists!
Population
control, a.k.a. fertility management, gets the careful consideration it should,
especially in light of its direct impact on global warming. Amongst the many tidbits to be gathered, Gore
has convinced me that the time has arrived when I should be fertilizing my
vegetable garden with my own “effluent.”
Ahem. With barely enough time to
catch her breath, the reader next explores increased human longevity,
genetically engineered foods, Colony Collapse Disorder, and antibiotics. Lest there be any doubt, it’s a complex world
we live in.
The
quickening pace of climate change and its multitudinous effects is given very
current, thorough coverage. The litany
of awfulness grows longer with each book, yet the author’s patience in relating
how far we have to go in order to consider the problem mitigated (the days of
stopping climate change are behind us now) seems endless. Gore’s contribution to this most important of
all conversations is impossible to exaggerate.
His generosity in sharing with readers so much of what he has learned
over the years matters very, very much.
What we do
with his gift is up to us.
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