Review of 'The World In 2050 Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
It's a good book, and refreshingly free of hysteria. It's written by a scientist, and it shows up in the detailed command of facts and statistics available. If anything, it's a little too detailed -- the author will state his thesis exactly once, and then bury you under so many facts that you wonder by the end what his thesis was. In the end, I had to remind myself every so often of the overall themes by reading the dust jacket.
Still, if there's anything to get from this, it's that a) water wars are uncommon, because the risks are actually too high (you lose, that's it) and b) Canada is going to be busy.
The interesting part is that the author went on a wide trip of Alaska and the cold places (NORCS), but did not spend huge amounts of time in Africa, India and China. Given that many …
It's a good book, and refreshingly free of hysteria. It's written by a scientist, and it shows up in the detailed command of facts and statistics available. If anything, it's a little too detailed -- the author will state his thesis exactly once, and then bury you under so many facts that you wonder by the end what his thesis was. In the end, I had to remind myself every so often of the overall themes by reading the dust jacket.
Still, if there's anything to get from this, it's that a) water wars are uncommon, because the risks are actually too high (you lose, that's it) and b) Canada is going to be busy.
The interesting part is that the author went on a wide trip of Alaska and the cold places (NORCS), but did not spend huge amounts of time in Africa, India and China. Given that many people in India already live near the famine line and people in Africa have huge problems with the climate already, some projections have shown huge amounts of famine and depopulation by 2050. I understand why it's not front and center, as he's primarily about the First World, but it would have been good to cover this in more detail.