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A review by jdintr
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
3.0
I have many friends who are conservatives--some who even fancy themselves libertarians--and to them I would recommend Ridley's book for a number of its insights.
Ridley's most interesting take is this: "ideas have sex with one another." In other words, they are living, and all living things evolve. Ridley, therefore, looks at standards of living today: lifespans, common appliances, incomes, and he states flatly that mankind has never had it so good. Stop complaining! I found the first half of his book very enlightening.
In the second part of the book, Ridley focuses his ire on those who are "irrational pessimists."
Living in the region I do, I fully expected him to address Bible-beating fundamentalist/ apocalypticists, but instead I found him taking on the environmental movement, which he sees as a barrier to future progress. Ridley relishes pointing out how, time and again, the doomsayers have been wrong--Y2K didn't fry all computers, every child growing up in the 1960s and 70s didn't die of toxic waste, and the Ozone Layer didn't disappear.
In this, I believe, Ridley is right to chastise media that tend to overblow bad news and ignore the good. Still, though, I felt that he went to far. It is true that acid rain is a thing of the past, and that toxic substances didn't doom 25% of children to early deaths, but humanity cleaned up the smokestacks, rehabilitated toxic sites, banned the clouroflourocarbons that caused ozone deplection. One cannot ignore these efforts, when stating that the warnings were baseless.
Personally, I believe the same about Global Warming. I agree with efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Ridley tries to tie Climate Change in with other previous go-nowhere doomsayers, but he wisely steers away from the basic science underlining these concerns: (1) carbon dioxide traps warmth in the atmosphere, (2) the amount of CO2 has risen sharply in recent decades, and (3) the CO2 increases are tied to man-made causes, not natural ones.
Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist, becomes the Rhetorical Polemicist in the last third of the book. It doesn't take away from the idea of philosophical evolution that he so well explains, but it does make one look forward to the extinction of the kinds of half-brained arguments he utilizes.
Ridley's most interesting take is this: "ideas have sex with one another." In other words, they are living, and all living things evolve. Ridley, therefore, looks at standards of living today: lifespans, common appliances, incomes, and he states flatly that mankind has never had it so good. Stop complaining! I found the first half of his book very enlightening.
In the second part of the book, Ridley focuses his ire on those who are "irrational pessimists."
Living in the region I do, I fully expected him to address Bible-beating fundamentalist/ apocalypticists, but instead I found him taking on the environmental movement, which he sees as a barrier to future progress. Ridley relishes pointing out how, time and again, the doomsayers have been wrong--Y2K didn't fry all computers, every child growing up in the 1960s and 70s didn't die of toxic waste, and the Ozone Layer didn't disappear.
In this, I believe, Ridley is right to chastise media that tend to overblow bad news and ignore the good. Still, though, I felt that he went to far. It is true that acid rain is a thing of the past, and that toxic substances didn't doom 25% of children to early deaths, but humanity cleaned up the smokestacks, rehabilitated toxic sites, banned the clouroflourocarbons that caused ozone deplection. One cannot ignore these efforts, when stating that the warnings were baseless.
Personally, I believe the same about Global Warming. I agree with efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Ridley tries to tie Climate Change in with other previous go-nowhere doomsayers, but he wisely steers away from the basic science underlining these concerns: (1) carbon dioxide traps warmth in the atmosphere, (2) the amount of CO2 has risen sharply in recent decades, and (3) the CO2 increases are tied to man-made causes, not natural ones.
Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist, becomes the Rhetorical Polemicist in the last third of the book. It doesn't take away from the idea of philosophical evolution that he so well explains, but it does make one look forward to the extinction of the kinds of half-brained arguments he utilizes.