Ronald Bailey (1) (1953–)

What I like most about this book is that I come away from it feeling like I now have a solid grounding in the environmental debates of our time. Bailey argues that we should be not only hopeful about the future, but even should expect things to continue to improve. It will be hard for many environmental radicals to accept this outlook, but for me at least, it was compelling that Bailey accepts climate change as an important trend. It's a critical problem, but one that can be solved through innovation and economic forces, just as has happened with all of the previous eco-risks. The arguments in this book are supported with plenty of evidence, including consideration for opposing views.… (mais)

While admitting that humans are probably changing Earth's climate, Bailey isn't ready to write off the human race just yet. Over and over again mankind has found technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, he says. Bailey thinks that political solutions to climate change are doomed to fail simply because people will not accept austerity now for future generations' benefit. .Further, he discounts some of the more extreme forecasts of doom and says that some effects of global warming may actually be beneficial. His book is densely packed with statistics and references to learned journals which I think are cherry picked to a degree. If Bailey is right that future generations will be so much better off financially than us that they will deal with a warmer world as a minor inconvenience. I suspect he is grossly underestimating the damage we're doing to our planet, but he provides a bit of hope that a dystopian future is not all we have to look forward to.… (mais)