The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change
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. --Gilbert Taylor