The infinite resource : the power of ideas on a finite planet

by Ramez Naam

Hardcover, 2013

Status

Available

Publication

Hanover [N.H.] : University Press of New England, c2013.

Description

A surprising, convincing, and optimistic argument for meeting the crisis of scarcity with the power of ideas

User reviews

LibraryThing member bragan
The world right now is facing some pretty serious problems. We're running out of the fossil fuels that power our civilization, our planet is warming up at an alarming rate, we're rapidly depleting the edible fish from our oceans, and in many places fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce
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resource. Ramez Naam paints a starkly realistic view of all these problems, but he believes that technological innovation provides the key to solving them. He discusses -- in great detail and with almost too many examples -- the point that technological progress has significantly and steadily increased our standard of living and, in general, made the world a better and healthier place. Past decades' dire projections of imminent worldwide famine, he points out, have not come to pass, thanks to the fact that new agricultural developments have more than kept pace with the the growing global population. And we've already managed to solve some fairly significant environmental problems, such as ozone depletion. So the best way to survive and thrive as a species, in his view, is to harness the power of human ingenuity.

His recipes for doing that are mostly not anything terribly surprising or new, largely focusing on developing renewable energy technologies and increasing the efficiency and cleanness of existing fossil fuel technology through a combination of free-market enterprise and some simple, sensible government regulations designed to encourage things in the right direction. Although he does also make a few more controversial suggestions, such as completely revamping our educational system and being willing to give a second chance to some currently unpopular technologies. (In particular, he contends that nuclear power is less dangerous than coal and could provide a useful stopgap during the transition to greener energy sources, and argues that genetically modified crops are potentially a great boon to both humanity and the environment.)

Although Naam doesn't pull any punches when it comes to describing the severity of our current difficulties, the overall tone of the book is extremely optimistic. Possibly a little too much so, since, after all, there are limits to how confident we should be when projecting past trends into the future, including the trend of technological progress. It is entirely possible that we've now reached a sort of tipping point where our technological advancements have begun to cause problems larger than technology can solve, or faster than it can solve them, and, to his credit, Naam does acknowledge this as a possibility.

It's interesting to compare this book with Bill McKibben's Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, which I read a couple of years ago (and which, coincidentally, I also got through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program). McKibben believes that we've pretty much already crossed a point of no return when it comes to global warming and that our only hope as a civilization is to pare back, to give up our expectations of constant growth, and to adopt a simpler, less energy-intensive, more locally oriented lifestyle. He makes a pretty good, if very depressing, case for his point of view. But Naam has some very good points, as well. I truly don't know which of them is right, but I'm certainly hoping that it's Naam. Even putting aside the question of which world we'd rather live in, I honestly don't see any practical way of getting to the future McKibben envisions without a major social and economic collapse. Whereas Naam is basically suggesting that we just need to keep doing more or less the same things we have been doing, only smarter. Only time will tell.
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LibraryThing member anna_in_pdx
This book is an overview of the history and future possibilities of human ingenuity, written by an Egyptian-American scientist. Ramez Naam's overall tone reminded me a bit of pundits-turned-authors such as Malcolm Gladwell or Thomas Friedman. However, he was a much better writer and his points were
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better argued.

Naam's thesis is that, given our ability as humans to innovate, and the power of the connection of human thought, if we are creative and serious about deciding what things to focus on and doing the problem-solving in a rational way, we can continue to maximize our efficiency in our use of resources and thereby solve environmental problems and human issues like poverty and hunger and in fact sustain a larger population than the Earth has now while raising the standard of living worldwide.

Naam spends a few chapters looking at the serious resource problems we face, and then goes into a detailed overview of how he thinks they can be solved. Most of his ideas sound good to me, as a lay person who is not an expert on any of those issues per se, but who has read widely on the environmental issues, particularly energy use and global warming.

Naam has the enviable ability to speak to people whose minds are already pretty much made up, and force them to at least do some minimal thinking about their views. He had me thinking about my views on nuclear energy and bioengineering. I won't say he totally convinced me, but he did make me think about these controversial sciences in a new way.

One issue on which I very much disagreed with Naam was his facile view on education. I agree with him that it is very important. I don't agree with him that the solution is to have "market based" solutions and only fund college degrees in the STEM fields because the humanities are worthless. I find it kind of ironic he's from the Middle East, where I lived for many years, and yet he does not understand how useful a liberal arts education can be. There are many people who have narrowly focused degrees in the types of field he values, who end up being extremists, cranks or merely selfish capitalists. Part of why many such people turn out this way is their narrow views of what sort of education is "good" and their dismissal of other areas of education. Not everyone has the same proclivities and there is always going to be a place in the world for art, literature, music, and the type of creativity that comes out of the humanities. Science needs to be balanced by other sorts of things, it is not a be all end all for humanity.

I also find it kind of problematic for him to assert that in his ideal future, all of us will be doing highly competent, intellectually stimulating, important work focusing on innovations that will make us all happier, healthier and wealthier. First of all we don't have a system in place that incentivizes this ideal but rather we have a lot of incentives in place that encourage people to be selfish, greedy, anxious about their own future and suspicious of others. Second of all we have different strengths. Not all of us are suited to be highly intellectual scientists, or policy wonks, or other things that his theory assigns great value.

These are actually fairly minor critiques as they only concern a small portion of his overall book. The book made me think a lot about my preconceived notions about the fate and future of humanity and the planet we live on, and it also gave me some hope that perhaps we are not such a destructive species after all. However, my final thought on closing the book was that I can't really let go of the idea that hubris is a dangerous thing, and this tempered my mostly positive reaction to the book. While I appreciate the many strides we have made in technology, science, and manufacturing, I worry that humanity is prone to making mistakes as well and that many of the things we do have unintended consequences. I think it would be good for us to take the ideas in this book, and if policy makers decide to apply any or all of them, they should do so with a modicum of humility.
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LibraryThing member lbeaumont
The free market is such a powerful catalyst of innovation that we need to be very careful about where we fail to employ it. The inventions of the industrial revolution, telephones, electric light bulbs, cars, airplanes, radio, television, computers, DVDs, iPods, and iPhones are all innovative
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products, encouraged by the free market, that improve our lives. But we are once again living in the best of times and the worst of times. We are approaching peak oil—the point in time when global oil production will decline forever, food prices doubled between 2002 and 2010, catches of wild fish have plateaued, fresh water shortages are becoming more common, and deforestation continues. Today’s population is consuming 1.5 planets’ worth of natural resources, yet we have only one planet. Resource consumption will continue to get worse, if everyone on earth lived like Americans we’d be using up 4.4 planets’ worth of natural resources.

Perhaps the most ominous warning of all is that our planet is warming. Even former skeptics now recognize that global warming is real. While many factors contribute, it is clear that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are now higher than at any point in the last million years. The warming we are seeing is almost entirely man made. Forecasts now show seas rising three to six feet by the end of this century, enough to displace millions of people from coastal cities and villages. Extreme weather, pressures on agriculture, rapid species extinctions, and ocean acidification are all likely.

The evidence and the consequences are clear. We must find ways to produce food and energy that sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How can free market mechanisms help?

There is a giant loophole in how we apply the free market today, it is called The Commons. The commons refers to those resources used freely by many, yet excluded from typical financial calculations. The oceans, rivers, lakes, and the air we breathe are now available free to any and all comers. This leads to the “Tragedy of the Commons” where waste and distortions occur from overuse of these essential resources. This market error is manifest today as overfishing, many forms of pollution, and the free emission of greenhouse gasses. The market isn’t just neutral to pollution. If polluting saves companies money, the market encourages it.

“The key to that—to all of that—is to make sure the market directly values the natural resources we care about. . . . Pricing carbon isn’t a big-government initiative. It’s a way to improve the market by giving it access to information it doesn’t have—the external costs of carbon emissions.”

The author proposes this simple plan for creating a carbon dividend:

1. Tax carbon. For the first five years the tax is zero.
2. Raise the tax periodically and predictably until the emissions goal is met.
3. Tax imports from countries that don’t have a carbon price, to level the playing field.
4. Give all the money collected back to the taxpayers. This is the direct dividend.

This is a tax on the bad rather than on the good, and it can be tax and revenue neutral. This simple plan provides insurance against the risks of peak oil, rising coal prices, and climate change.

With effective market incentives, innovation can unleash solar energy, desalinization, recycling, and continued increases in efficiency of materials and energy used. Our challenge isn’t that we’re running out of energy, it’s that we’re using the wrong source. To collect enough energy to provide for all of humanity’s current needs, using current consumer-grade solar technology, it would take only 0.6 percent of Earth’s land area. Because of the learning curve, every solar panel built makes solar energy cheaper. Every barrel of oil extracted makes oil more expensive.

This immensely important book is a joy to read. It is innovative, well written, clear, well researched, and scrupulously balanced. The author presents and examines the traditionally conservative viewpoints, the traditionally liberal viewpoints, the big business arguments, and the environmentalist arguments, clearly, factually, fairly, and completely. He embraces capitalism, free markets, nuclear energy, and genetically modified crops, along with government regulations and the imperative to shift to solar energy sources and reduce greenhouse gasses. He particularly courts conservative thinkers with appeals to free markets, highlighting successful ecological actions of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and the opportunity to return money to taxpayers. He identifies the free exploitation of the commons as a form of socialism, rather than an example of free market forces at work.

The author is not only innovative and practical, he is optimistic. Throughout the book he identifies many available alternatives that can improve the lives of all future generations. The last chapter identifies four changes that we as a society need to make:

1. Fix our markets to properly account for the value of the commons.
2. Invest in research and development to fund long-range innovations.
3. Embrace the technologies that stand poised to improve our lives while bettering our planet.
4. Empower each of the billions of minds on this planet, to turn them into assets that can produce new ideas that benefit us all. Add to the Knowledge Commons.

The book ends with two very different tours of the future. One describes affluence and well-being for all, the other is quite grim. The choice is clearly ours, and this book clearly informs our choice.
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LibraryThing member AdamRackis
This is simply an outstanding book about the challenges, and potential solutions to the world's problems.

The author starts by describing the classic bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon, the result, along with an explanation of how powerful markets can be in decreasing the cost of goods. He
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goes on to describe the changing conditions the world has seen since then, with the rapid growth of the developing part of the world. He describes in vivid terms the climate change problems we face, and the challenges this planet faces in supplying enough energy for itself. As the author points out, most metals have since increased in price drastically, and if the bet had been placed more recently, Paul Ehrlich would have won.

The remainder of the book is a soaring, optimistic look at many of the potential solutions the world has available to it. He talks about nuclear power, and how badly its safety has been distorted. He talks about GMOs and their ability to reduce hunger, reduce nitrogen runoff, and improve nutrition through things like golden rice. He also talks about effective, market-based ways of reducing carbon output, like cap and trade, and even a carbon tax.

The book is an incredibly fast read, and I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in these topics.
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LibraryThing member rtp3
Working in a field where I am constantly exposed to intellectual property (patents & trademarks) and surrounded by many of the people that create them, I was excited by this book and its focus on ideas. While I appreciated Naam's description of the many problems that the world is facing and I liked
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(and agreed with) his optimism about the power of ideas to solve the world's problems, there were several sections of the book that I didn't like or agree with.

I don't agree with many of his characterizations of individuals that have issues with controversial technologies - mainly, nuclear and bioengineering. While I agree that nuclear energy *could* be a solution, he is as bad as many of the Luddites he bad-mouths for his devotion to bioengineering as a solution to world hunger, especially when combined with his naive vision for the future (which is the second major issue I have with the book). His final worldview is one in which individual work for the greater good ... but he doesn't address why or how to achieve it. His is a idealistic utopia that doesn't fit with the real-world motivations of people, countries, and corporations. Finally, I have major issues with his ideas on education and would suggest that most readers simply skip that portion of the book.
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LibraryThing member turtle1965
I got a free copy of this book from the Library Thing Early Review program. I was excited to read this book and it is most assuredly a worthwhile book to read. This book talks about many different situations affecting us and solutions to solve them by sharing ideas and knowledge. A very good read.
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Thank you.
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LibraryThing member jerry6030
“The core argument of this book is that the force that’s propelled us to our present well-being is also the most powerful resource we have to tackle out future challenges: innovation.” (preface)

Ramez Naam has done a remarkably good job of developing this thesis. The amount of research he had
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to have done to put his story together is daunting. It is well written, and interestingly and logically presented. It is a serious book, not suitable for a weekend read at the beach. I would have been inclined to give it six stars, but because of a few criticisms and lots of little nits, I cut my evaluation down to only five. Nits and all, it deserves five.

Mr. Naam begins by recounting the general story of how successive innovation has brought us to the modern world, and how much it has improved the lives of those of us lucky enough to be in the leading edge of that evolution. This serves to cement his thesis that human ideas and creativity are the Infinite Resource. He argues that since more people imply more innovation, we should welcome a large global population. Innovation already has demonstrated that the globe can support us all. And, intelligently directed, the higher level of future innovation afforded by more people to do the innovating can lead to even better lives in the future. (This is not without some qualifications which I will not try to enumerate.)

Mr. Naam paints a pessimistic picture of the global warming threat, emphasizing the danger of a little warming causing the release of much more the very potent greenhouse gas methane, thus accelerating the warming trend in a very positive feedback. Not uniquely, he champions the reduction of CO2. I do not fault his valuation, but I do fault his failure to cite that fact that there are responsible opinions that do not see the problem as bleakly as he does.

Quite correctly in my opinion, he places the availability of energy as a key determinant of the world’s future well-being. With enough cheap energy we can compensate for many other deficiencies; we can desalinate water, manufacture fertilizers, make up for other deficiencies.
He devotes some discussion to the notion of “peak oil”, which he considers to be either now or in our near future. He recognizes that the end of oil has been predicted many times before, and somehow improving technology of exploration and recovery has staved off any but short and artificial price peaks. But he seems to consider us now near the end of our rope, and the coming shortage from this source puts urgency into the development of other sources. Clearly someday it will peak—it is not infinite—but only parts of the world have been extensively searched, and I am less convinced the show is nearly over. In my perhaps poorly informed judgment a rising trend in price will be slow enough to allow reasonably deliberate substitution from other sources when it does happen to start downhill.

Mr. Naam discusses at some length three alternate sources of energy: solar, wind, and nuclear. He devotes considerable attention to solar, and obviously sees great potential here. He notes the need for better methods of storage to accompany solar and wind—production patterns do not match usage patters—but doesn’t address anything but batteries. In my view, he underestimates the storage problem or perhaps overestimates the potential for further battery improvement. First, batteries as an energy source for vehicles are at a huge technical disadvantage to fossil fuels. That is very apparent when one compares the range of a conventional car with an all-electric one (and the comparisons I have seen assume the batteries are not also cooling or heating the vehicle. Heating comes for essentially free with an internal combustion engine).

This range deficiency in the all-electric vehicle comes from the fact that a conventional vehicle produces energy by burning carbon and oxygen, producing CO2. It carries the carbon, about 20% of the weight of a CO2 molecule, in the form of a fossil fuel in its tank; it gets the oxygen part, about 80% of the weight, from the air around it. Current batteries do not use a gas from the air, so have to carry all the fuel that produces the electricity. This puts batteries at a roughly 5:1 energy per pound disadvantage that is very difficult to overcome, and is the reason that the range of electric cars is so restricted.

A much more hopeful prospect discussed by Mr. Naam is nuclear. The technical picture is very bright, and it, in my opinion, is by far the best prospect for fulfilling our future energy needs. He explains that nuclear is being held back by both public fear and a failure to understand its promise of much lower costs than current experience would suggest. These fairly pervasive fears will have to be alleviated for it to reach its potential.

The criticisms and differences of opinion expressed above are trivial in the larger picture of Mr. Naam’s discussions of a host of other considerations: feeding the multitudes, the impact of the urbanization trend on innovation, longevity, market behavior, government actions, and coda for the future. He is an optimist, and I found it a delight to read his very thoughtful analyses.
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LibraryThing member pattyduncan
The ancient Chinese symbol signifying equal attributes for danger/opportunity is the approach taken by Ramez Naam in his recently published The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. Present dangers make Naam's book an anxious read. The thread that haunts these pages: have we
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passed the limits of our planet's capacity to support us. Yet, the book offers equal examples of innovations that provide opportunities to overcome seemingly insurmountable dangers.

Traveling between time and cultures is the pendulum that moves this extensively-researched book. Naam's comparison of the U. S. in the 1970s (when his parents emigrated) to his birth country, Egypt, was, he notes, like looking back in time. "Polio was common in Egypt in the 1970s but that wasn't far different from what it had been in the U. S. just two decades earlier." As an immigrant, Naam's perspective was intensely personal: "Five of my mother's siblings died in infancy from preventable diseases. Three of my father's siblings died the same way . . . Yet, had I been born in the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century, my chances of infant death would have been just as great as they were in the Egypt of 1973."

Naam's optimism is palpable as he outlines the many ways in which civilization(particularly Western society), has used innovation to overcome obstacles: superior results over the last century are astonishing -- for instance, life expectancy has risen, even in undeveloped countries; there is better nutrition (better seeds and farm technologies with free market systems to give farmers incentives to grow more food with higher yeilds); in the last fifty years, we've tripled food production, feeding billions of people. Genetically modified plants have fulfilled a goal of more nutrition. Clyphosate (the product Round-Up) is safe, compared with previous herbicides (there are no records of toxicity). There is much greater literacy (in 1970, 63 percent of adults worldwide could read and write; in 2010, the percentage was 84.) Even our economic hurdles have improved: "The Great Depression of the 1930s knocked the GDP of the U.S. down by 26 percentage points, to 25 percent. By comparison, the 2008-2009 recession, the GDP dropped 3.3 percent, less than one percent of the banks in the country failed, and the unemployment rose by 5 percentage points to 10 percent." On a global scale, Naam writes, the rich are getting richer but the poor are gaining in wealth even more quickly. That's just some of the good news -- and there is much good news in this book about our finite planet.

Yet, Naam reminds his (feeling good now!) reader that the mighty Mayan civilization, a large and sophisticated culture whose members undoubtedly saw themselves as masters of their domain, exhausted the primary source of energy for their survival -- the land beneath their feet. And the land beneath our feet? Oil. Eighty million barrels a day, every day. Which is finite. Just like the soil of the Mayan civilization. The focus of the "danger" in our present environment is our dependence on, and overwhelming of, our finite resources, oil the primary example. The danger in our dependence on oil is the carbon dioxide we release into our atmosphere. Today, that means 30 billion tons of CO2 every year, sixty times more than we released at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before the Industrial Revolution, CO2 made up 280 parts per million of the atmosphere. In November, 2011, it was about 390 parts per million. Recent news reports have stated the ppm are now at 400. The question becomes, how many parts per million of CO2 can the atmosphere withstand without destroying life on our planet. Some pertinent facts include: Half of the warming of the planet, between 1 and 1.5 degrees farenheit, has happened since 1970. The ten warmest years on record since the 1800s have all occurred since 2000. Across the U. S. in the last ten years, record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows. In the '50s, they occurred with equal frequency. Yet, Naam makes clear that climate change in "lumpy and uneven." That's why you hear the redundant joke when temperatures plunge below normal: "must be global warming."

For those who continue to doubt climate change, Naam outlines many "heated" examples: Europe had the hottest summer on record since 1540 in August, 2003. Seventy thousand died. France lost 20 percent of its wheat crop. The Ukraine lost 75 percent of its wheat harvest.

China, likewise, in March 2010, experienced the worst drought in a century, leaving 20 million people without drinking water. Wells dried up. . . wells that had provided water since 1517. When the rains returned in May, it was the worst flooding in a century. More than 3,000 were killed, with the evacuation of more than 15 million people. A million + homes were destroyed.

A study in 2005 found the amount of energy and destructive power of hurricanes in the Atlantic had risen by about 75 percent over 30 years.

Wildfires in the U. S. between 1960 and 1978 generally burned between 500,000 and one million acres of land a year. In 2000, five million acres burned. In 2011, nearly nine million acres burned.

In 1850, Montana's Glacier National Park had 150 active glaciers. Today, there are less than 25.

In one century, Mt. Kilimanjaro has gone from 20 square kilometers of glacier to less than three. Half the mountain glacier cover seen a century ago in the Alps is now gone. Sea levels around the world have risen seven inches in the last century -- their rise has doubled in the last ten years.

But it isn't just the warming of the planet, created by CO2 levels in the atmosphere. We're overwhelming our seas (some fishing industries have, for all practical purposes, collapsed), our fresh water ("the rate at which we consume water -- particularly for agriculture -- exceeds the rate at which we can capture it from rain or via sustainable withdrawals from rivers), our forests (the U.N. reported that between 2000 and 2010, the world's forest cover dropped by an average of 5.2 million hectares (or 20,000 square miles) a year) and even our elements, such as potassium, neodymium, tantium (used in electronics), uranium, helium in addition to coal and natural gas.

Despite the dangers and depletions, Naam remains an optimist. He sees opportunity in many of our present innovations, excitable opportunities. He sees hope not only in solar power but also nuclear power. He sees abundance in genetically engineered seeds. He sees miraculous possibilities in products such as graphene -- a better heat conductor than any known material and, at room temperature, a better electrical conductor than any known material.

Naam gives the free market credit for innovations. Western civilization has particularly benefitted from the free market and the exchange of ideas and innovations. But he notes the flaw in the free market -- the common areas. Like rivers. Like air. Like forests. Like the oceans. "Our rivers, lakes, forests, oceans and our atmosphere are resources that we simply can't live without. The value they provide us is astronomical. Yet, because no one owns them and no one manages them, no one feels the full brunt of loss when they are damaged. No one feels a concentrated SELF-INTEREST proportional to the value these resources provide us." He reminds his reader that the exploitation of the commons isn't the free market -- it's a form of socialism. The market only works well in managing those resources that have prices on them.

Naam challenges capitalists -- and he admits to being one -- to level the playing field of the market by putting a price on damage to our common areas. He is firm in his belief that the market is the real key to solving our environmental challenges. The market is "a brilliant tool for aligning personal self-interest with the interest of others." His book is a call to use our infinite resource to protect our finite resources. His exhaustive command of environmental issues as well as cultural and scientific details, innovations and advances, makes an anxious read nevertheless an exciting and important one -- and should be required reading in high schools and colleges.
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LibraryThing member sportzmaniak
I was excited to read this book. The author does a great job setting the scene, describing the dire state of our reality. However never really gets to anything new and innovative when suggesting resolutions. The book is easy to read, and is actually a quick read. I dont know that many versed in the
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perils of our planet and history will come away with any groundbreaking or eureka moments. This is a good book that I recommend for those looking for a high level overview of ways to start the analysis of the human good.
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LibraryThing member johnclaydon
When I first saw the title and subtitle of this book I was excited. I have been saying for many years that we can have unlimited development on a fixed material base.

What a let down. It turns out to be a very conventional bucket of mush. 337 pages of it. His use of history is flaky. It is a long
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vague disorganized ramble of facts and anecdotes, with little innovative thinking.
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LibraryThing member jwmccormack
Ramez Naam calls himself an optimist, and his book's simple thesis -- through innovation we can extract all the resources and wealth we could ever need from our planet -- is nothing if not optimistic. He deploys a modicum of history, economics, popular science, and conventional political wisdom to
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convince the reader that, time and again, unforeseen technological advances have made possible more efficient production and distribution of goods and resources and allowed both the population and the average worldwide standard of living to climb. This is, so far, not terribly controversial, and his brisk, journalistic style makes the book accessible to a wide audience.

I am no expert on politics as the art of the possible, so I cannot fairly evaluate his specific proposals regarding, for example, carbon taxes. His matter-of-fact tone and common-sense posture, however, mask some deeply partisan ideas. I point to his unqualified endorsement of genetically-modified food products and his quick dismissal of European Union requirements for transparent labeling and restrictions on their development and sale. Because Naam is so optimistic about the human capacity for innovation, he does not dwell at length on the potential for disastrous unintended consequences of the deployment of technology. Human history is littered with examples. For Naam, they are but further opportunities for innovation.

Underlying his untroubled belief in "innovation" as a progressive, positive force in history is an acceptance of Richard Dawkins' broader social application of Darwinian natural selection. Naam writes that "memes" engage in "idea sex," leading to the creation of new ideas. If they propagate further, these "sexually" reproduced ideas will, he believes, pass on the best of their parent ideas. Space does not allow here a full exploration of the ways this proposition fails to take into account the range of influences on human behavior that might shape the creation and application of ideas. It becomes easier to see, though, how Naam believes that at the level of the planet and the species, human existence on Earth can proceed unproblematically if we just keep thinking.

Naam does not limit his predictions to the macrocosm, however. He predicts wealth and prosperity for individuals and societies in ways that move beyond optimism to utopianism. The book's presentation of the challenges facing the world today is clear, but its embrace of technological change as a means to perpetual growth does not dwell on the many political, economic, and ethical problems involved in applying scientific development on such a massive scale.
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LibraryThing member tim.taylor
What I thought might be a book-length magazine article turned out to be a thoughtful, comprehensive and well-argued look at the bright possibilities for our future. What impressed me most was the breadth of his analysis, ranging widely from energy to agriculture to climate change and beyond. He
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believes -- and backs up his beliefs with facts -- in the power of innovation to solve problems, in the power of the market to save the commons, and in the power of the human mind to overcome obstacles. I found this book to be enlightening and refreshing and highly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member GGlusman
(I received this book via the Early Reviewers program.)

Naam is an optimist, of that there is no doubt. What makes this book very worth reading is that Naam is also very aware of the graveness of the problems we are facing, and recognizes that ultimate failure is an option. Not just an option, but
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the default option. His main thesis is that through innovation we can resolve most problems we are facing in our mismanagement of this planet. There is no self delusion here that "everything will be fine because we are innovative" - it won't just happen. We collectively need to make the right choices and have as many people as possible thinking very hard to invent and implement the best solutions.

Naam is very partisan, yes. As he explicitly says in the book, this may prove to be of great value as his message may be better heard by those of similar convictions, but not yet acknowledging the magnitude and nature of the problems.
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LibraryThing member IslandDave
I received this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers. The book focuses on the impact of environmental and economic decisions and how those aspects of our lives will affect our future living conditions. Innovation is a key point and the author spends time reviewing current issues and how
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those issues can be negatively or positively impacted by our policies. The book was enjoyable so long as you understand that most books about futurism are often making projections that are not certain, and this book is no different. However, the author's focus is solid, the narrative is easy to follow, and the issues discussed are worth the time to consider.
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LibraryThing member kaydern
“The Infinite Resource” is a a long-form essay argument that details several dangers that humanity is facing, primarily global warming and food shortages. The format is to start with a preface about how humanity has overcome systemic problems in the past. He then goes on to describe the
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evidence for these mounting problems, paints a picture of what could happen if things continue as they are, and ends with what could be done to avert disaster.

My first thought is that Naam has an impressive command of a divisive topic. He did a good job of covering the value of the free market’s problem-solving skills, and then adding in the complexity that pure market solutions can run rampant without some other powerful body to create costs that benefit society in general. He made a lot of masterful arguments that were meant to sway specific parties without being obvious about it, to lead everyone regardless of political affiliation to the same conclusion.

I was convinced, but I’m politically a liberal and I was already convinced that climate change is real and we need strong intervention to curb it. However I am by nature convinced by information, so I learned a lot about possible market-driven solutions as well. I did pick up a few more conservative-friendly talking points though.

I have a generally pessimistic view of humans and this book doesn’t change that. I think it has all the right information, and while I know many individual persons who can be swayed by data, people are another thing entirely. By itself this book it’s not going to convince “hierarchy-minded” individuals because they won’t be convinced until one of their own starts saying it.My hope is that this book does inspire politicians or savvy public speakers to start talking about climate change in these terms.
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LibraryThing member gail8206
I was very excited to get this book and looked forward to reading it. I really enjoy the history lesson of how England prospered while China fell behind. This just proves the point of how we must change with the times or get left behind. I was dismayed by much of the history stuff but I guess it's
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necessary to fast forward to the future. It goes without saying that there is infinite resources within our nation and all must look at ways to tap into the vast infinite resources to thrive for generations to come. This is a quick and easy read book with interesting thoughts of Ramez Naam.
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LibraryThing member mikelink45
There is an overstatement of technologies abilities to solve the world's problem, but an excellent look at what those problems are.
LibraryThing member kimsbooks
A book about the very real problems we face on this planet, and about the very real potential we have for addressing them through ideas. I'm less sure about our likelihood of success with some of them than this author, but admire the effort and optimism.
LibraryThing member amdp7887
Loved it. Great read. I find its always a great book when you learn something new which i did.
Would recommend it to everyone.
LibraryThing member DrT
Ramez Naam’s, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, is a powerful and brilliantly written book that displayed a keen mind of a well traveled and intelligent man’s view of the reality of what is faced in today’s world. He does a wonderful job reviewing historical
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segments in population growth, economics, innovation, risks we face with limited resources, and others and his hope in the potential of the human mind. I found this book fun to read, thought provoking and I wanted a bunch of my friends to read this so we can have fun discussions on the ideas presented in this book. I cannot help but think we are reading this book at a time that falls somewhere on the ups and downs of various dimensions and not sure when the next life changing idea with arise. When starting this book I thought it was all about a negative/pessimistic perspective from the author but as I read on I really picked up the optimism in his thoughts and began to buy into his impressions and gained hope in this book. I may be too premature in my buy in because there is a huge heal ahead of us and do not see the “what” will be in the necessary change to make a difference. In reality, I think we need to “do what we can” and ultimately, “Wait and see what happens.” I am please and thankful I was selected by Librarything.com as an early reviewer of this book. I thank University Press of New England publishers. I highly recommend picking up this book, read it, and become one of the brains Naam puts his hope in for the needed change.
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LibraryThing member Cheryl-L-B
This book presents, in a common sense manner, an overview of our current global situation with special emphasis on environmental, socioeconomic and political issues. Themes are timely; cogent examples from both the recent and distant past are used to present options for dealing with serious global
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challenges as well as depicting projected possibilities within the next 50 to 100 years. Facts are presented with simple graphs, easily understood explanations and in a non-dogmatic and non-hysterical manner. Global warming, fossil fuel depletion and alternate energy sources are a few of the topics discussed. This book could form the basis of a documentary, in order to reach a wider audience. Nicely organized, well worth reading; would be a good book for junior high students.
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LibraryThing member readaholic12
This book remains unfinished, as it was a bit of a dense read for me. My son saw the cover and asked to borrow it and he is finding it an interesting read. I hope if finds its way back to me so I can finish it!

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