The Age of Resilience by Jeremy Rifkin

 This is one man's idea about how the humans can survive the impending mass extinction brought on by global warming and rising numbers of pandemics. Rifkin spends the first part of the book telling all the ways the world is doomed.  Some that he mentions are global warming, soil erosion, increased extreme weather,  and the resultant civil unrest.  He makes a case that all these problems arose out of human's attempts to be "efficient." Then he spends the rest of the book explaining how humans and societies must change in order to survive the catastrophes that are coming. In essence he suggests that humans must move away from the age of fossil fuels, capitalism, and centralized government, and instead become empathetic to each other and nature and learn to live in harmony with both. 

Ok, so that summary sounds flippant, but I was amazed at how lacking this book--by a really famous author and environmentalist--is in sound logic and objectivity.  After reading it I looked up his bio and I wasn't surprised to learn that he has no formal scientific training, but instead only has a bachelor's degree in economics. As a result, the book represents he own personal views on a lot of loosely connected world problems which he promotes with great enthusiasm and confidence but not a lot of rigor. His language is very emotionally charged, and he seems to only speak in superlative.  He also constantly makes logical errors in his writing.  For example, he takes a few examples and presents them as irrefutable evidence of growing trends, when, in reality, they are only a few small examples. As an example, he talks about forest pre-schools where kids stay outside all day regardless of weather.  He boasts that there are 600 such preschools in the US, a clear evidence of their growing popularity.  600? really. There are about 90,000 preschools in the US, so only about a half of one percent are forest preschools. He also compares things that are not comparable.  He spends a whole chapter talking about the problems infants have when they are neglected and fail to bond with adults. Then he says that modern people suffer with the same kinds of problems because they fail to bond with their communities and with nature. I am not saying that everything in the book is wrong.  I think he has some good ideas.  It is just that the solutions he proposes are pipe dreams that would require a pretty drastic change in human nature to come to pass. Still it was interesting to me to see all the different ways he tries to influence readers. (2022, 336 p)