Review: This is proving to be one of the more interesting books this year. It's an update of an earlier text on surviving the 2030 'spike' - a time of confluence, according to the author, when a series of global forces intersect. It seems to bring together a range of ideas that have surfaced, in one way or another, since the 1970s. At the heart of the book is a thesis that we have about 25-30 years to make some radical adjustments to the way we are going at the moment. To this is added the current idea of some sort of pivotal moment (tipping point in current writing) beyond which our options will be more limited. Using the idea of extrapolation, the author manages to come up with a central message but one, this time, which is more optimistic. This is what is proving to be interesting - not so much the message but its construction within a landscape of ideas whose genesis is not always appreciated.

The book is divided into four corresponding, basically, to problem, process, solution and potential. The first part (actually titled ' is there a crisis?) starts by painting a picture of two societies - ecocentric and technocentric if you will but whose outcomes are clearly different. Thus the scene is set: the polluted industrial-complex city of the connected series of social villages. Connections are drawn with 'Limits to Growth' but not to 'Blueprint for Survival' (its opposite at the time) but to 'The next 200 years'. References are made to a range of writers who support the idea of change and the problems we are facing. The author notes that there are forces (drivers) that are defining the way we work and the options we take. These drivers are the subject of the next six chapters: energy, population and poverty, climate change, food and water, politics/governance and weaponry (especially nuclear). For each one, evidence is presented about the changes that are occurring and some potential scenarios. There's also a text box for each one showing how the driver could be made to work in an 'optimal' (utopian?) world. Part two focusses on the human agencies that lead much of the current situation. We start with scientists. The author examines this from a range of perspectives. How do scientists think? Is the scientific method have the right view for a changing world with its emphasis on reductionism rather than holism? Which directions offer the most hope (nanotechnology comes in for some supportive review here). At the end, there's another of the 'optimal' text boxes showing which directions are most useful, notably the establishment of a world review process (a sort of science world government) to decide directions. A similar process is repeated for the organisations/people/processes in this section: genetic manipulation, marine usage, multinationals and finance. In each case the result is the same - the need for a change in direction and, often, for control of events through a world police/government. Part three examines the individual and what changes can be made to create a 'better' lifestyle. We start with the pursuit of 'happiness' and what that entails. This is followed by considerations of family/cooperative life and our urban existence. Education gets an examination with the conclusion that the current system does not work and that another, less restrictive, system is needed (with the obvious overtones of Neil's Summerhill, and Illych's 'de-schooling society', unmentioned, in the background). Critiques of health and religion conclude this section. The final part looks at society and the changes that need to be wrought. Government should be more democratic (although you don't need environmental concerns to focus your mind on that). Goods need to be produced for longevity and not obsolescence by people and not machines. This might require less travelling to reduce the impact of transport emissions. Alternatively, it might mean working from home. The culture should be made less 'toxic' and society more equal: slavery should finally be banned and the more negative side of culture should be controlled (violent video games etc.). Finally, we need a world government to ensure that there is more equity. The concluding chapter attempts to put these together to make a reasonable future scenario.

What are we to make of this? On the one hand it is a well written scenario trying to gather a very wide range of social and ecological phenomena together to make a plausible case for the ways in which might develop. As such it would make a very interesting starting ground for students wanting to examine, critically, future directions and provide them with a good direction from which to reach their own conclusions. On the other hand, it's a utopian text whose ideas have been available for some time and whose flaws are well rehearsed. The 'oneworld' government, for example, might succeed but the United Nations has failed despite all attempts to assist it. Here, it becomes a more difficult book to judge for at its deepest level it demands a thorough analysis of all its tenets to see which are viable. Either way, it provides for debate and that is probably as good a starting point for now as any other.