On a similar vein, I'd also recommend the book Factfulness by the fantastic Hans Rosling (who, sadly, died last year). It is full of exciting anecdotes from the real world and much-needed reminders with lots of informative and fun statistics (one of the amusing ones: "guitars per capita"), and it's a fun read. Rosling isn't all theory; he actually worked as a doctor in Africa (at one point he was the only doctor for 300,000 people!) and many adventures across the world, educating people about Global Health and helping create sensible policies.

I like the term: "possibilistic", which Rosling uses as a less-naive alternative to "optimistic".

The book is college-level reading, though, and not as rigorous as Steven Pinker's book. (Bill Gates was giving away a free digital copy of Factfulness to all graduates in the U.S.)

Thanks for the recommendation. Im cautiously optimistic tbh but this summer in Europe didn't look great. 3 years ago in Indonesia was a disaster of biblical proportions and i guarantee you must people don't even know about it.

I read another book recently that was quite indirectly enlightening on the subject. Energy by Richard Rhodes

Being disheartened by one warm summer is as anecdotal as dismissing global warming after a warm winter. It's true that it was hot, but that may actually have been good, as people may finally be getting their act together (the chances of which are MUCH larger if they're told that there's still time).

The world has never been better equipped to tackle its problems than now. Take comfort in that. And as a citizen of, probably, a democratic state and with the Internet at your fingertips, you have more power than ever, as an individual, to affect our collective destiny.

Will check out that book!

17 of the last 18 years have been the hottest on record.

If you want to know the challenge ahead of us go visit the slums of Manila or walk on practically any beach in the world and count the pieces of plastic.