Book review: How to fix a Broken Planet – Advice for Surviving the 21st century
This book, released in January 2023, is the latest book by Julian Cribb, an Australian science communicator and member of the Council for the Human Future. He has written ten books, with the most recent other books including: Earth Detox: How and Why we must clean up our planet (2021), Food or War (2019) and Surviving the 21st Century: Humanity’s Ten Great Challenges and How we overcome them (2016).
The book identifies ten mega-threats that have the potential to end human civilisation on our planet, including:
Degradation of ecosystems
Overuse of resources
Nuclear threat
Climate change
Poisoning of the Earth
Pandemics
Lack of food
Over population
Ultra-technologies
Mass delusion and misinformation.
The ten core chapters of this book describe each of these mega-threats and what can be done to overcome them. The description section of each chapter includes discussion of the scientific evidence supporting why it is a threat to the human race. Each chapter identifies actions that can be taken by individuals, community groups, organisations and governments. For example, the chapter on climate change provides nine strategies for addressing climate change which require system level change and also includes 14 actions individuals can take.
The first reaction to this book can be a feeling of being overwhelmed – what hope is there for the human race when there are so many mega-threats? It is hard enough to get people to engage with climate change as a major threat without thinking about all the other challenges on this list. If we did solve climate change but did not solve the other threats, then one of the others could lead to the end of human society.
However, an important message of the book is that when deciding on taking action to address one mega-threat, it is important to ensure that the action does not make other threats worse. Also, actions taken to help address one threat can also help address other threats. For example, shifting food production from current agricultural systems to intensive local urban systems contributes to addressing climate change by using less energy and transport but also helps address the lack of food and overuse of resources.
The inclusion of some of these threats in the top ten list could be debated. For example, it could be argued that technology and misinformation do not warrant the same attention as the others. Artificial intelligence technology is causing concern but whether it is as threatening as the possibility of nuclear war. It could be argued that misinformation has always existed – it is now just much more obvious with social media.
The format of the book does not allow for detailed exploration of how some of the strategies to address the mega-threats would be implemented. For example, one of the solutions to the nuclear threat is to “outlaw and destroy all nuclear weapons”. There would be significant opposition to any such strategy from Governments and companies that build nuclear weapons. The proposed solution is for citizens in the nine countries with the ability to destroy civilisation to put pressure on their governments but it is hard to see how this will be enough to overcome the opposition to this strategy. Nor does the format of the book allow for discussion of how the strategies can overcome the historical opposition that many of these have faced since being originally proposed in books like A Blueprint for Survival, published by The Ecologist magazine in 1972.
Why read this book? It will increase your understanding of these threats which face the human race. It will encourage you by seeing that the actions you are currently taking to address any one of the threats can also help address some of the other threats. It updates the list of strategies that have appeared in similar books for the past 50 years. It will challenge you to think about how the actions you are advocating or taking do not make the other threats worse.
Julian Cribb’s book is available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com.au/How-Fix-Broken-Planet-Surviving-ebook/dp/B0BQC66M6Y/