OUR GLOBAL CRISIS

“WE’LL NEVER RUN OUT!”

by Brian D. McLean ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2024

A broad overview of the challenges facing humanity and the changes needed to meet them.

McLean opens his hefty nonfiction debut with a stark and deceptively simple question: Can humans, who are completely dominant on the planet, actually change not only the patterns of their society, but their very nature? It’s an age-old situation—people get so caught up in the pressing business of their own lives and jobs, the author notes, that they overlook the bigger picture. As the book’s subtitle indicates, people have always reflexively thought of the natural world as infinite and inexhaustible. McLean’s narrative looks at complex civilizations from the past, with a special emphasis on the Rapanui people of Easter Island (where “lack of care and management of the island’s resources led to the catastrophic failure of their socioeconomic system and the eventual collapse of their society”), inquiring into how those civilizations grew, flourished, and then failed, in part or in whole due to their heedlessly exploitative behaviors. Those behaviors, the author asserts, are hard-wired into the human evolutionary nature, which is focused on the present and the local at the expense of the future and the universal. “We have evolved to consider little beyond the confines of our mind’s eye,” he writes, “and what we think may impact our lives or the lives of our children and grandchildren.” Drawing on his case studies, McLean contends that “evolution never provided an off-switch” for humans’ survival-driven competitive nature, but he also details the advances that have been made in spite of these instincts, everything from increases in human rights to the greater accessibility of urban planning and design.

McLean’s chapters are well paced, and his prose, though sometimes wordy, is forceful. On some subjects, the author’s determination to see things from a global and historical perspective can skew his accounts of actual events. Discussing the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, he writes that the United States, with its wealth, technology, and medical achievements, should have been “a pillar of hope and strength for humanity,” but the U.S. failed to rise to the challenge due to “the ongoing bickering between the two national parties,” which “greatly impacted the nation’s ability to deal with the pandemic crisis.” This reading of the crisis feels off: only one of those two parties promoted vaccine skepticism, and it was the leader of that party who knowingly lied about the severity of the virus and publicly suggested it could be countered by ingesting bleach. While the fact that, sometimes, problems really do have local causes is a persistent blind spot in McLean’s narrative, the bulk of the text is both insightful and challenging. In a semi-ironic twist, he actually cites the world’s response to Covid-19 as a cause for hope that humanity does have the potential to pull together to face global challenges on a global scale. “We, as a species,” he maintains, “are making progress, with a great many advances on many fronts, including the environment and social justice.” The author’s willingness to explore his ideas about human collective action across a wide variety of subjects, from warfare to developments in human longevity, imbues his book with a universal perspective that many readers will find intensely thought-provoking…and maybe a bit encouraging.

A dense but engaging examination of human nature and its implications for the future.

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2024

ISBN: 9780993607202

Page Count: 612

Publisher: Tellwell Talent

Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL NONFICTION