Book #53: Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Sometimes, when I read news stories or even just think too hard about the future, I get depressed. Oh, most of the world lives in poverty and doesn't have access to clean water or education. Oh, the environment is going to pieces and we're all going to die when global warming happens. Oh, the world's population is too big and we're not going to be able to produce enough food and clean water for ourselves in a few years. Oh, the health care system in America is messed up and what are we all going to do when there are more retired people than working people in America?

Now, I really don't know very much (or ANYTHING) about these issues, except what you hear over the news. But this book, which I am really very happy I read, is actually promoting the opposite, non-depressing vision of the world: things aren't getting WORSE, they're actually about to get better. There are tons of problems facing the world right now, but the good news is, there are hundreds and thousands of people working on coming up with solutions to those problems, and a lot of those solutions sound really, really neat. And are becoming actual realities really, really fast.

For example, a huge percentage of the world doesn't have adequate energy sources and still relies on wood-burning stoves to provide their food and heating. This lack of energy contributes hugely to their poverty level--they can't improve their situation when they have to spend 50% of their time searching for more wood to burn so they can feed their families, etc. But there are some really incredible developments that are coming in the energy world, in solar, biofuel, and nuclear energy, that might change all of those problems. Solar energy is becoming more and more affordable by the year, and thousands of people are highly invested in developing better and better technologies for it. According to this book, within the next five years, solar energy should be just as affordable as normal energy sources in the United States. Isn't that amazing to think about? And similar developments are coming about in nuclear energy as well--imagine personal-sized nuclear generators that are completely safe and maintenance-free, which can be buried in the backyard and work for 50 years without problems. (That's a little farther away--maybe 15, 20 years, but people are talking about it!)

Diamandis and Kotler present tons of examples of these developments in a number of other areas as well: water, food, education, health care. I feel so much more optimistic about the world's chances of survival after reading this book. Even if none of these specific developments end up fixing everything (or anything), the point is that there are people out there who are working on fixing these problems. There are technologies being developed to specifically address every single issue we're worried about. I just hope they come about pretty quickly, you know?