New world new mind

Simply the most important book for the survival of the human species I have read in the past 25 years.

Investigates, documents, and explains how humans, even very smart humans with Ph.Ds, make very poor short term vs long term decisions, specifically about things like overpopulation and climate change.

This book is about how the human brain evolved in the old world to meet the old world's challenges, but how our old brain no longer makes correct decisions in our modern, industrialized world.

As Earth heats from global warming, I think the only hope now to save the human species is to start by clearly understanding the nature of our underlying problem. I think these two authors have presented that problem squarely in New World New Mind. It's not technology that will save us. It is understanding our human nature and correcting for it. In their final chapter they suggest a valuable strategy to cope with our brain's evolved handycap.

Yes, this is an older book now, but I think it's message is more important than ever as of late 2016, where the future of life on Earth now looks very dark to this environmentalist and engineer.