Sierra Club Reviews The End of Doom
And the reviewer doesn't entirely hate it.
As some Reason readers may have heard, I have a new book out, The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century. It's been reviewed in various places, including the Wall Street Journal. I just came across the recent review of it over at the Sierra Club. Like most environmental activist groups, the Sierra Club has a rather downbeat view of the future of our planet. So I was surprised at the rather wistful and somewhat contradictory tone of the review of my book over at the organization's website. From the review:
It is refreshing to read about positive trends that bode well for the future of humanity, such as the mass migration to cities ("the most environmentally benign human settlement"), or the potential for self-driving cars to significantly reduce the amount of vehicles globally. Nevertheless, we get the sense that Bailey is ignoring a whole lot of bad in order to highlight the good.
The book is overly packed with studies and statistics. Bailey's research was clearly exhaustive, but his writing sometimes feels like a composite of other people's arguments.
Overly packed, yet clearly exhaustive? Those are criticisms? Also as a reporter, I don't just make stuff up. So I do confess to writing analyses that incorporate insights from other people's arguments, especially those derived from researchers who publish "peer-reviewed science done in good faith."
The review concludes:
Bailey doesn't go so far as to say that rising temperatures aren't a worry, but his message is that "the solution to future climate change is the same as for other environmental problems—the application of human ingenuity and technology" fostered by free market capitalism. While the book doesn't entirely convince us of that, we can only hope, to some degree, he is right.
May I suggest that you all buy and read the book to see if you think that I am right?
