Brighter cover art

Brighter

Optimism, Progress, and the Future of Environmentalism

Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

About this listen

If you think we are doomed, think again: We can meet our environmental challenges and build a brighter future with clean technology.

Up until now, human progress and prosperity has come at a terrible cost to the natural world. Everywhere we look we see environmental devastation, and the looming threat of climate change casts our very future into doubt. Many believe our only option is to make massive cutbacks, to downgrade prosperity, to shrink the global economy by half or more. But this would only exchange an ecological catastrophe for a social one. If we truly face a no-win scenario, is it any wonder pessimism is so widespread?

Brighter explains that a very different future lies ahead of us. Adam Dorr is an environmental scientist, technology theorist, and Director of Research at the renowned think tank RethinkX. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Dorr explains that technological disruptions are already underway that will radically transform energy, transportation, food, and labor. The clean new technologies will wipe out older, dirtier technologies, foster unprecedented prosperity, and open the door to mitigating environmental impacts and restoring ecological integrity at a planetary scale – including solving climate change.

With clear explanations based on the pioneering work of RethinkX, Brighter offers an antidote to pessimism and false hope by giving us compelling reasons for optimism grounded in data, challenging us to reimagine environmentalism for the 21st Century.

©2023 Adam Dorr (P)2023 Adam Dorr
Environment Science Technology
All stars
Most relevant
Central book theme of using technology to fix the challenges of climate change is great, as is the need to remove carbon & remediate

Sadly it’s very selective about *which* technologies are important, and also overlooks practical issues of transitions.

It asserts that by 2040, agriculture & land use will be transformed, 95%+ of meat/fish replaced, very fast switchover to EVs & aviation etc. Ignores the politics, behavioural & investment / trade inertia issues involved - and the timelines for changes. Just because cars replaced horses in 15 years it doesn’t follow that other shifts can be as quick. (For instance, changing gas heating systems)

Also ignores the inevitable growth of both nuclear energy and hydrogen for energy storage/transport - both of which are cornerstones of the new environmental movement.

Some good underlying arguments but major flaws

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This is the book that fixed my climate change despair - not by offering vague soothing emotions, but hard facts and solutions.

This is the book that describes the future most accurately. The way forward is to let the market choose the cheaper solutions, which are luckily the clean ones.

it's kinda sad though: the humanity will save itself because it was cheaper, not because it was the right thing to do. Remember this.

Solutions

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This book gives an optimistic view of the future that we all need in today’s day and age

Optimistic view of the future

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.