The upside of down book cover

The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

in

The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies’ management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls “synchronous failure.” But crisis doesn’t have to mean total calamity. Through catagenesis, or creative, bold reform in the wake of breakdown, it is possible to
reinvent our future.

The uninhabitable earth book cover

The Uninhabitable Earth

in

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

Falter book cover

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

in

Bill McKibben’s Falter tells the story of converging trends—global warming, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics—and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control.

David Suzuki video

Why it’s time to think about human extinction

in

In this video episode of Unstoppable, environmentalist, activist, professor of genetics and science broadcaster David Suzuki hits us with some home truths about what our future will look like if we continue to live the way we have been.