Posted here: 5 Dec 2021
This little masterpiece brings together, dissects, and digests a huge variety of sources of information relating to the (mostly unintended, and largely unnoticed) impacts of human actions (including giving birth to more humans) on the future of life (human and non-human life) on this planet. Warnings and actions (or proposed actions) by individuals, organisations and governments have so far failed to make much difference, except in the wrong direction (more of the same), partly because of wide-spread failures to relate discussion of frightening consequences to the primary cause -- human reproduction rates leading to steadily increasing rates of consumption of steadily decreasing resources (including space on the planet). One of the major causes of failure is wide-spread acceptance of religious dogmas and prescriptions not yet countered adequately even in the most advanced educational systems. This is mentioned but not, in my opinion, stressed adequately. This is also a flaw in most public protests related to global warming and its likely disastrous consequenses. Moreover, most human brains seem not to have benefited from mathematical education about surprising consequences of exponential growth even when the exponent is tiny, a point that should perhaps have been emphasised in this book. (Perhaps it was, and speed-reading let me down.)
Maintained by
Aaron Sloman
School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham