Book Review
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science, by Paul Behrens, London, Indigo Press, 2020, 346 pp. ISBN: 978-1-911648-09-3.
Deeply researched, remarkably accessible and comprehensive, The Best of Times is a treatise of the deteriorating social and physical systems of our world. Particularly critical structures include climate, racism, politics, energy, economies, food, information, and the media. Uniquely qualified to address the cross-disciplinary threads of our planetary crises, Behrens categorizes a bundle of wicked problems now facing the human race. Providing context and perspective, this book points to several examples of where inequality has led to collapse of civilizations. A vast set of complex objectives are set out which we must meet in a crucially brief and shrinking timespan. As the author has stated on social media, he emphatically provides no “sugar coating.”