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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Global warming and environmental destruction threaten humanity in the present already.
Chapter 2: In the worst case, climate change poses an existential threat to humanity and most Earthly life forms.
Chapter 3: Even in more favorable scenarios, climate change still poses a grave threat to humanity.
Chapter 4: On our present trajectory, climate change’s societal consequences will be extraordinarily disruptive and profoundly dangerous indeed.
Chapter 5: Genetic engineering presents a second threat to the human game.
Chapter 6: Artificial intelligence presents a third threat to the human game.
Chapter 7: If saving our species from annihilation matters, do not count on space travel either.
Chapter 8: There are some relatively simple, practical steps we can take to address threats to the human game today.
Chapter 9: Powerful individuals and corporations obstruct our efforts to address global warming, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence today in practice.
Description
Falter (2019) provides a rather sobering counterargument to the rash of optimistic books about the present and future that have been appearing on the market lately. Instead of everything being pretty good and set to get even better, author Bill McKibben argues that things are already pretty bad and are on a course to get even worse, due to the threats posed to humanity by climate change, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. He then goes on to provide some suggestions for how we can deal with these threats before it’s too late.
Who Should Listen
- Those skeptical of authors preaching optimism about the future of humanity
- Science fiction buffs wondering about the likelihood of a dystopian 21st century
- Any human being concerned about the survival of our species