Medhat ullah’s Reviews > Our Final Hour: A Scientist's warning - How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century — On Earth and Beyond > Status Update

Bleak futurism

The "downside"
from twenty-first century technology could be graver and more intractable
than the threat of nuclear devastation that we have faced for decades. And
human-induced pressures on the global environment may engender higher
risks than the age-old hazards of earthquakes, eruptions, and asteroid
impacts

SCIENCE IS ADVANCING FASTER THAN EVER, and on a broader front:
bio-, cyber- and nanotechnology all offer exhilarating prospects; so does theexploration of space. But there is a dark side: new science can have
unintended consequences; it empowers individuals to perpetrate acts of
megaterror; even innocent errors could be catastrophic

Rees' logic, they seem far from impossible. But Rees does not simply
outline his theories. Throughout, he repeatedly implies something else: We
can do something to help."

"Rees invites us to also consider developments that many of us
probably never thought about, including: Could environmental degradation
lead to a "war for water"? Could machines-designed plants crowd natural
plants out of the ecosystem? These ideas may inspire skepticism, but within

"One of the most provocative and unsettling books I have read for
many years . . . That a scientist so distinguished as Rees should air these
fierce anxieties is a sign that something is amiss."
—J. G. Ballard, The Daily Mail (London)

"Doomsday books have appeared for centuries. But Rees' book is
unique, and not only because of his fame as a Cambridge University
professor who is not prone to making scary public statements."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"[Rees's] cautionary tale comes as a useful counterbalance to some of
the overly optimistic books recently penned by scientists . . . Our Final Hourneither worships nor condemns modern science, but it does offer a clear,concise account of what may be our most urgent concerns in the 21st
century."