Matt Ridley - The Rational Optimist
I bought another book on Kindle today by Matt Ridley called The Rational Optimist.
He was on a TED Talk, which I'll embed here.
Here is a short snippet:
"When I was a student in oxford in the 1970s the future of the world was bleak; population explosion was unstoppable, global famine was inevitable, cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was gonna shorten our lives, the acid rain was falling on the forests, the desert was advancing by a mile or two a year, the oil was running out, and a nuclear winter would finish us off.
None of those things happened.
And astonishingly, if you look at what actually happened - in my lifetime - the average per capita income, of the average person, on the planet, in real terms, adjusted for inflation, has trebled. Life-span is up by 30% in my lifetime. Child mortality is down by two thirds. Food production is up by a third. And all this at a time when the population has doubled."
Posted on Sunday, Oct 10, 2010
