The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore - Book Report #238

My goodness this was a "BIG" book.

That's right:  All caps, bold, italics and in quotation marks.

Each chapter could have been a book in and of itself.  Which made this volume overwhelming and, at times, made me throw up my hands in frustration, thinking that the troubles of our time are just too big to take on!

I wanted hope and, sadly, like so many of these kinds of books, the discussion was thin on solutions.  But, as I started to think on it, the reason answers are not provided is for the simple reason that they have not been thought of yet.

Peter Diamandis is fond of saying that the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.  And he's right; living here on the prairies I'm personally worried about drought, but the world is lousy with water.  In my mind desalination will be a world wide game changer.  If that one problem alone could be solved, scarcity of fresh water, so much of our problems could be solved.

Imagine - pipelines filled with drinking water, instead of oil. Wow!

Al Gore takes on the world in this book.  Like I said, it's a big book.  He discussed:

Table of Contents:

1. Work: The World of Work in the New Global Economy
a. An Introduction to the Global Economy
b. Outsourcing
c. Robosourcing
d. Automation in the Financial Industry
e. The Redistribution of Wealth

2. Power: The Shifting of Power from Nation-States to Multinational Corporations
a. The Rising Power of Multinational Corporations
b. The Declining Power of the United States

3. The Internet: The Global Mind
a. The Rise of the Internet
b. The Internet of Things, and ‘Big Data’
c. Global Democracy
i. Overthrowing Dictatorial Regimes
ii. Reforming Established Democracies
d. The Dangers of the Internet

4. Biotechnology
a. Biotechnology in Food Production: GMOs
b. Biotechnology in Medicine

5. Demographics and Natural Resource Depletion
a. Population Increase
b. Displacement of Peoples: Xenophobia and Urban Stress
c. Environmental Stress
d. Techno-Optimism
e. Techno-Pessimism
f. The Solution: Reforming GDP

6. Climate Change
a. The Problem
b. The Effects: The Threat to Food and Freshwater Sources, and the Displacement of Peoples
c. The Solution

See what I mean?  These are intense subjects.

I was glad I took the time to get through it.  There once was a saying, "think globally and act locally," this book illustrates that there is an abundance of problems to tackle and you can make a difference even if you choose to work on one or two things yourself.

If you can start a business to solve a problem, so much the better.

Highly recommended, but hang on to your optimism it will be challenged by Al Gore.

His website is here - https://www.algore.com/