The Future

February 18, 2013
Former Vice President Gore draws links and offers cautionary advice for individuals and governments alike in this exhaustive, historically-grounded argument about six concepts that he believes will exert the greatest influence on humanity's future. The global economy, the proliferation of the Internet and intelligent machines, a shift in the balance of global power, unsustainable growth and consumption, the rise of biotechnology, and the relationship between man and Earth's ecological systems are the broad areas explored here. With echoes of his previous books' calls for restrained consumption and the reestablishment of a "healthy and balanced relationship" between humanity and the natural world, Gore (The Assault on Reason) makes the seemingly contradictory argument that a properly restrained democratic capitalism "can serve the world better than any other economic system." Particularly interesting sections cover the effect of the Internet and the globally-integrated economy on cultural and national identity, the potential for advances in biotech to disrupt "the ecological system within our bodies," and possibilities for combating global warming. Gore's strengths lie in his passion for the subject and in his ability to take the long view by putting current events and trends in historical context, and they outweigh the dry tone and occasionally contradictory arguments. Agent: Andrew Wylie, The Wylie Agency.

Starred review from January 15, 2013
A tour de force of Big Picture thinking in which the former vice president gets his inner wonk on. Gore (Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, 2009, etc.) writes that this book had its origins in an on-the-road conversation about the drivers of global change--of all kinds, from economic to cultural to environmental. The author spent the next few years outlining, outlining and outlining again--and then thinking, gathering, sifting and writing a tome that he reckons is "data-driven and based on deep research and reporting--not speculation, alarmism, naive optimism, or blue-sky conjecture." It is all of the former, with a quarter of the book given over to notes, and none of the latter. One of the six drivers Gore enumerates is the emergence of a technologically driven "global mind" that tends toward the liberating and away from the repressive. At the same time, though, there has emerged a libertarian puritanism that insists on "the reallocation of decision-making power from democratic processes to market mechanisms," dismissing "the very notion that something called the public interest even existed." Sustainable energy sources have similarly emerged even as market mechanisms have pushed "fracking" of fossil fuel deposits, such that--it would not be a Gore book without, yes, alarming statistics--"in the United States an estimated 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid waste have been injected into more than 680,000 wells." Biomedicine has made extraordinary advances, and yet, because of "unhealthy corporate control of the public policy decision-making process," medical care is in complete disarray. And so on, the good with the bad. Which will prevail is the question; if for the good, Gore urges, we will need to see "a shift in consciousness powerful enough to change the current course of civilization." Provocative, smart, densely argued--and deserving of a wide audience and wider discussion.

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February 15, 2013
Since exiting the political stage after the controversial presidential election of 2000, Al Gore has pursued a lucrative business career while continuing his series of works of environmental warning, which began with Earth in the Balance (1992). While less admonitory than An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Gore's green concerns persist in this new assembly of prognostications, which organize the author's vision of humanity's prospects into six categories. Those are economic globalization (which Gore tags as Earth, Inc. ), instantaneous communication ( the Global Mind ), international relations, demography and capitalism, human health and biotechnology, and natural resources and climate change ( the Edge ). Identifying trends in each area, Gore the polymath posits directions and destinations he sees as desirable and scolds what he regards as the impediment to their realization, namely, a corruption of American democracy by corporations, lobbyists, and campaign cash. Certainly a wide-ranging socioeconomic and scientific survey of humanity's next decades, Gore's palpably political imperative is the distinguishing trait of this contribution to futurology, a genre with a checkered past. Time will tell whether the author's predictions hold up. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Some of former vice president Al Gore's books have cracked best-seller lists, and though this title will not likely do so, Gore's high media profile will draw plenty of attention to his new book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)