CHAPTER 10: The two great pessimisms of today: Africa and climate after 2010 (The Rational Optimist)

In the mid-1970s it was briefly fashionable for journalists to write scare stories about the recent cooling of the globe, which was presented as undiluted bad news. Now it is fashionable for them to write scare stories about the recent warming of the globe, which is presented as undiluted bad news. Here are two quotes … Read more

Chapter 8: The Invention of Invention: Increasing Returns After 1800 (The Rational Optimist)

Although the human race as a whole has experienced incessant change, individual peoples saw a much more intermittent flickering progress because the pace and place of that change was itself always changing. Innovation is like a bush fire that burns brightly for a short time, then dies down before flaring up somewhere else. At 50,000 … Read more

Chapter 6: Escaping Malthus’s Trap: Population after 1200 (The Rational Optimist)

The Malthusian crisis comes not as a result of population growth directly, but because of decreasing specialisation. Increasing self-sufficiency is the very signature of a civilisation under stress, the definition of a falling standard of living. Until 1800 this was how every economic boom ended: with a partial return to self-sufficiency driven by predation by … Read more

Chapter 5: The Triumph of Cities: Trade after 5,000 Years Ago (The Rational Optimist)

Not long ago, demographers expected new technology tohollow out cities as people began to telecommute from tranquil suburbs. But no – even in weightless industries like finance people prefer to press into ever closer contact with each other inglass towers to do their exchanging and specializing, and they are prepared to pay absurdly high rents … Read more

Chapter 4: The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Farming After 10,000 Years Ago (The Rational Optimist)

Other trends too have made modern farming better for the planet. Now that weeds can be controlled by herbicides rather than ploughing (the main function of a plough is to bury weeds), more and more crops are sown directly into the ground without tilling. This reduces soil erosion, silt run-off and the massacre of innocent … Read more

Chapter 3: The Manufacture of Virtue: barter, trust, and rules after 50,000 years ago (The Rational Optimist)

Looking around the world, there are plainly societies which manage their citizens’ lives well with good rules and societies which manage their citizens’ lives badly with bad rules. Good rules reward exchange and specialization; bad rules reward confiscation and politicking. South and North Korea spring to mind. One is generally a fair and free place, … Read more

Chapter 2: The Collective Brain: Exchange and Specialization after 200,000 years ago (The Rational Optimist)

There is a single twitch of progress in biface hand-axe history: around 600,000 years ago, the design suddenly becomes a little more symmetrical. This coincides with the appearance o f a new species of hominid which replaces its ancestor throughout Eurasia and Africa. Called Homo heidelbergensis, this creature has a much bigger brain, possibly 25 … Read more