The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science

By: Paul Behrens

Narrated by: Paul Behrens, Oliver Hembrough

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Academic, physicist, environmental expert and award-winning science communicator Paul Behrens presents a radical analysis of a civilisation on the brink of catastrophe. Setting out the pressing existential threats we face, he writes, in alternating chapters, of what the future could look like at its most pessimistic and hopeful.

In lucid and clear-sighted prose, Behrens argues that structural problems need structural solutions and examines critical areas in which political will is required, including women's education, food and energy security, biodiversity and economics.

©2020 Dr Paul Behrens (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Critic reviews

"Paul Behrens’ nod to Charles Dickens in his title - The Best of Times, The Worst of Times - is a fitting one, for Behrens writes with the verve of a novelist, and the story he tells - how our environmental future is entangled in issues of equality, employment, housing, food, energy and much else - is a page-turner. While there are many books out there on the impact of climate change, I know of no other book that weighs the evidence so even-handedly, from both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives, enabling readers to evaluate the scientific data in an informed way. This is an illuminating and deeply researched book, one that deserves a wide readership." (Professor James Shapiro, Columbia University)

"The Best of Times, The Worst of Times is written in a style that brings all the data but is clear, concise, and at times poetic. Behrens takes a deeply interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon economics, sociology, biology and behavioural science to sort out the important causes of and solutions to our current climate crisis. Buy this book for your friends. Make them read it. It will change the way you think about the future and live your life in the present." (Stuart Vyse, author of Going Broke)

Important issue, but not very careful

This book has elicited rave reviews on Amazon, so far. The book speaks to readers, apparently, and of course the issue of climate change is a crucial one. However, the prospective reader should be cautioned. It is a member of a certain genre of climate change books that Michael Mann has labeled alarmism. Others of the genre include Wallace-Wells's The Uninhabitable Earth and Mark Lynas's Our Final Warning. Climate change is such an important issue that those who write books about it should strive for accuracy. Behrens's book is abundantly footnoted, but one gets the impression that he is excessively interested not in the facts, but in telling readers what they want to hear, especially with respect to fantasies of ideal political orders. Thus the rave reviews, I think. Behrens has a PhD in physics, and he has made a career change to become an environmental academic. The prose is littered with such words and phrases as 'catastrophic,' 'civilizational collapse,' and 'billions may perish.' The explanatory power and credibility of such descriptions depends upon the author's grasp of the topic and his good judgment. Here are some of the many instances in the book in which neither is shown:

The author claims that "Costa Rica will be banning all petrol vehicles by 2021." This is not only not true, it is obviously not true. Apparently (from the footnote) this false information was picked up from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is great, but he should know that Wikipedia is easily edited. The "fact" is no longer in the cited Wikipedia article.

The author gives an example of a collapse -- in this case dark age Britain after the Romans left. Without the Romans, the inhabitants, the author claims, "forgot how to make nails." No. The author read a book (itself without any footnotes) that made a claim that could have, with a good deal of credulousness, been interpreted to mean that the British, the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse, the Irish, the Welsh, and whoever else remained after the Romans left forgot how to make nails. Of course, the "fact" is untrue. The author of the book cited has recently written a better informed book that makes this clear. (See The Material Fall of Roman Britain, 300-525 CE, by Robin Fleming).

Another example from Behrens of historical collapse is a result of ransacking the literature all the way back to 1990, to find a paper that he claims says the following: “For the Greenland Norse, after settling in Greenland during the 10th and 12th centuries, the society failed to adapt to a cooling climate during the little ice age of the 15th century. They had built an economy on cattle but, as the ice expanded, cattle farming became increasingly untenable. Anthropologist Thomas McGovern suggests that landed elites couldn’t let go of their cattle–based power. Instead of adapting by emulating the local Inuit’s food sources of seals and fish, the Greenland Norse held on to their traditional economic arrangements until they could no longer survive.” The cited paper does not say anything like that. The author cited (McGovern) does speculate in that vein in another paper. But in a more recent article (Smithsonian Magazine, March, 2017: "Why did Greenland's Vikings vanish?"), McGovern and others completely contradict Behrens.

There are other similar examples from Behrens's book. Behrens tried to write a big book, full of many topics, like history, demography, climatology, food systems, etc., most of which is beyond his expertise. It takes a long time to become knowledgeable in these and other fields. Maybe in ten years Behrens will have done this. He is on his way, but he is not there yet.