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The Rational Optimist Publisher: Harper, by Matt Ridley
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- Sales Rank: #368199 in Books
- Published on: 2010
- Binding: Hardcover
Most helpful customer reviews
245 of 277 people found the following review helpful.
Will our future be 2,000 more years of imminent apocalypse?
By Steve Summers
First, the GOOD NEWS: the sky isn't falling! The world is actually improving dramatically and the pace is quickening. There are abundant facts to prove it. The BAD NEWS predicted isn't true after all. The not-so-good news is that good news doesn't sell newspapers or prime-time ads. So we'll keep on hearing that doomsday drumbeat of horrific predictions from the media, all of it certified by officials of academia and government with an obvious agenda in the vision of impending environmental collapse which can only be averted by comparably drastic intervention. We have a glut of popular books and articles feeding these fears with plausible evidence for the demise of civilization or the planet, but a critical shortage of books like "The Rational Optimist" which challenge that evidence, describe its pathologies, and show where those disastrously coercive interventions will lead, and what they'll cost in human terms. So why risk ostracism in cocktail-party conversation by reading a persuasive contrarian essay which proclaims a heretical optimism in its title?
Well, one reason might be the pleasures of an utterly readable book. Unlike talk-show polemicists, Matt Ridley uses good-natured eloquence, serious erudition and incisive wit to deflate the imminent-disaster scenarios which dominate our evening news, academic and political discourse. Despite its length, the book is remarkable for its brevity and the sheer quotability of its prose. (A reader cribbing zinger quotes will soon have writer's cramp.)
Another reason might be the challenge of unfamiliar ideas, of cleaning the mental attic of the baggage left by cultural osmosis. No book can guarantee final truth, but a fresh perspective can provide plenty of creative stimulation for a skeptical mind. Ridley's long view of human history, his perspective on the unrequited human penchant for seeing imminent catastrophe informs both his skepticism and his optimism, and it makes great straight-to-the point reading. No obfuscatory jargon, no shrill hype or invective.
Two of his unfashionable heresies are A) that prosperity is a hugely positive benefit to humanity--not a planet-killing consumerist fetish, and that B) individual freedom--not government planning or humanitarian intent--is the primary engine of that prosperity. His earlier book, "The Red Queen" described sex as the primary engine of evolution. The sexual metaphor gets new life in this one. The explosive growth of human knowledge and wealth in recent centuries is described as the result of "ideas having sex"--something that rarely occurred in prior millennia. It's not a coincidence that science, individual liberty, and the industrial revolution experienced a virtually simultaneous birth. This "sex" between ideas has been increasing in both quality and frequency with cumulative results of stunning usefulness. Think of what's happened in your own lifetime.
He's also compiled a list of dire prophecies which never happened, some of which are perennially predicted anew with updated "tipping point" projections: worldwide starvation, hydrocarbon exhaustion, mass extinctions, nuclear extermination, mineral resource depletion, genetic decay (eugenics was invented to prevent that) global cooling (global warming could be next if the last decade's weather stasis continues). Environmental problems which were once big news (acid rain, industrial hormone mimicry, lung-rotting smog, skyrocketing cancer proliferation, holocaust viral epidemics, etc.) quietly vanished from the news when the threat receded or failed to produce significant harm, much less bio-Armageddon. A historical batting average of .000 has done little to discourage fresh predictions of the apocalypse.
A minor focus is the relatively harmless rash of costly and often foolish environmental fads. He writes penetrating analyses the value and costs of organic farming, local food, and the obsessive horror of modern chemistry, fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified crops.
His more deserving targets (I think) are the dubious "green" technologies with high--often disastrous--environmental costs: ethanol in particular, but also solar, wave & wind power. He's not opposed to the latter energy options in principal, but shows they're unlikely to replace hydrocarbons anytime soon. Most of these alternative energy "cures" are not only environmentally worse than the "disease" (fossil fuel), but their their high costs will be borne in heavy disproportion by the world's poor. But for dogmatic insensitivity, few examples can match the righteous zeal of some activists for preventing America's poor from shopping at WalMart, for shutting the developing nations out of the global economy, or keeping genetically modified food out of the hands of literally starving Africans. A corollary widespread belief (Ridley quotes some prominent advocates) is that prosperity itself is the enemy of the planet and global salvation must necessarily entail global impoverishment--in effect, a lethal Malthusian population limit waiting to be imposed by environmental decree.
Ridley avoids a pro or con position on global warming, but he's rightly wary of reacting in panic: the cost of overestimating GW could be much higher than underestimating: in his words, it's like stopping a nosebleed by putting a tourniquet around your neck. (It would be even more foolish in response to a predicted nosebleed.) But he didn't write this book to heap ridicule on doom sellers. He shows why they're always wrong: linear extrapolation from the present inevitably predicts a disastrous future--which is invariably wrong because it ignores the equally inevitable (but unpredictable) free market actions which future investors, entrepreneurs and inventors will take to sidestep the icebergs in the shipping lanes. Ideas "having sex" are far more nimble and productive than governments issuing prohibitions or doomsday prophets clamoring for an emergency reversal of course.
(My note: only in inflexible dictatorships does mass civilian disaster arrive inexorably, as in Ukraine in the 1930s, China in the 1960s, North Korea today. In none of these regimes were (any) ideas allowed to "have sex". Unfortunately, just such a dictatorship will probably be necessary if the world decides to implement the Environmental Taliban's agenda to save us from planetary sacrilege.)
"The Rational Optimist" is a wonderfully well-written counterpoint to the alarmist feel-bad prophecies (which will probably continue to outsell it) but it is not overtly political nor brimming with righteous denunciations. It is at least as rewarding as an insightful tract on human nature (and folly) and as much a call to reason as survey of contemporary intellectual hysteria and prejudice. I enjoyed reading it immensely, and unless you are allergic to bad news about the BAD NEWS, I think you will, too.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Beautifully Reasoned
By T. Edward Fenstermacher
This book is a beautifully reasoned expalnation of what makes the human race different from the animals, how this leads to continuous innovation, and how, (if we don't foul it up, which we surely still can), it can lead to a vastly more prosperous world for all of us (particularly the parts that are now poor) in the coming century. Here, briefly, are a few of his central ideas, which are all supported by the evidence he presents. These work together to support his central thesis.
Specialization is good.
Trade is good (and we are the only species that trades).
Together, specialization and trade enable us to efficiently use our talents in the best way to get the best of what others produce.
Self-sufficiency leads to poverty, because no one can master all of the skills and have all the tools necessary for anything above a subsistance living.
Cross-fertilization of ideas is necessary. Rarely if ever does one invent something entirely on his own. Inventions come from putting together ideas others have had in novel and unique ways. (As a patent holder, I can attest to this.)
Use of energy from other than human beings is what allowed the effective end of slavery (Yes,it still exists, but is criminal nearly everywhere).
The more compact the form of energy, the better for the environment.
The higher the real per-capita income, the longer and better people live.
In the next century, real growth will allow us to deal with any ill effects from global climate change, and lift Africa out of poverty, if we but act reasonably intelligently.
I don't have the book in front of me just now, so I may have left something out. But I assure you, Matt Ridley did not. Get it, read it, and be sure to look at the graph at the beginning of each chapter.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An ok read for long trips...
By J. Moncada
Interesting point of view. Indeed it is true that even those who live under duress today have a much better quality of life than say middle class people in the 1500s. I agree that technological progress has enabled and will continue to enable a longevous population worldwide; we however, have the responsibility of making such advances widely available. I also concur that the mirage of a life free of chemicals and genetically modified foods is that, a mirage... Not a page turner though...
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