A look at the environmental and natural resource challenges of climate change, energy, water, and food, and charts a course to meet those challenges by investing in the scientific and technological innovation needed to overcome them, and by changing our policies to encourage both conservation and critical innovations.
Climate Change. Energy. Water. Food. Population.
We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges. They pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself.
Our only hope to address these problems is to innovate to grow the global resource pie. In this remarkable book, Ramez Naam charts a course to supercharge innovation – by changing the rules of our economy – that gives us our greatest hope of achieving greater global wealth and human well-being, even as we dodge looming resource crunches and reduce our impact on the planet.
From solar power to desalination, from next generation crops to next generation batteries, from technologies that could scrub carbon from our skies to those that could turn our garbage dumps into piles of valuable resources – solutions are possible: But only if we invest in innovation, and only if we put the right incentives in place around the globe. This book shows the scope of the problems, the landscape of the solutions, and policy changes we need to make to bring those solutions to fruition.
“This book contains a plan – probably the only plan – to save the world. Ramez Naam is unwilling to minimize the challenges that face us, but equally unwilling to sermonize or catastrophize. The Infinite Resource is an intelligent and responsible analysis, presented in lively prose; it should be required reading for all global thinkers and leaders.“
Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature.
“Most books about the future are written by blinkered Pollyannas or hand-wringing Cassandras. Ramez Naam–Egypt-born, Illinois-raised, a major contributor to the computer revolution–is neither. Having thought about science, technology and the environment for decades, he has become that rarest of creatures: a clear-eyed optimist. Concise, informed and passionately argued, The Infinite Resource both acknowledges the very real dangers that lie ahead for the human enterprise and the equally real possibility that we might not only survive but thrive.”
Charles Mann, NYT best selling author of 1491 and 1493
“Brilliant. Ramez Naam shows that innovation is the only force equal to the global challenges that face us, and that we can prosper if we harness it.”
Ray Kurzweil, bestselling author of The Singularity is Near
“An amazing book. Throughout history, the most important source of new wealth has been new ideas. Naam shows how we can tap into and steer that force to overcome our current problems and help create a world of Abundance.”
NYT Best Seller Abundance – The Future is Better Than You Think
“A refreshingly thorough roadmap of solutions to our energy and climate crisis.”
UTNE Reader
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