Fewer, Richer, Greener

The news is filled with doomsday stories claiming our world is experiencing stagnant economic growth, environmental deterioration, dwindling natural resources, and an unsustainable increase in world population. For years we've been told that the population explosion will lead to impoverishment and perhaps kill us all. Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance debunks these notions and explains that we will have fewer people than we were expecting, we will become richer, and, perhaps most surprisingly, that the planet will become greener. While there are always reasons for concern, Laurence Siegel explains that we have more reasons to be optimistic about the future than not. Life has improved greatly in the last 250 years; Fewer, Richer, Greener makes the argument that it will continue to improve in almost every aspect including health, wealth, longevity, nutrition, literacy, peace, and freedom. Without ignoring the many challenges on the path of progress, the book helps restore faith in the future and offers an understanding of why hope is justified. Fewer, Richer, Greener is written in a lucid and witty style, filled with art, architecture, poetry, and personal reflection as well as accurate data and research, and offers an in-depth look at the best books on the topic by leading thinkers. Designed to transform conventional thinking, the book makes a convincing case for having gratitude for today's world and optimism about the bountiful world of tomorrow. We can look forward to technology that makes life more pleasant and interesting and enables more people to have access to the rich cultural legacy of millennia of human accomplishment. Siegel reveals that we are at a turning point where the economic development of the past 200 years in the first world has begun to spread to the rest of the globe. This future will not be without problems, but we will have the knowledge and technology to solve problems in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago.