Yet another prospective solution to climate change, but one of the most feasible.
A venture capitalist and a host of relevant contributors lay down a practical path in the fight against climate change.
The book features firsthand accounts from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, Mary Barra, and other big names in the “cleantech” world. Doerr warns that even in the unlikely event that nations keep their pledges from the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world will still be more than four degrees hotter by 2100, a global catastrophe. Experts agree on the critical importance of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and getting halfway there by 2030. Doerr approaches the problem as a hard-nosed businessman who sees an opportunity, creates a plan, and organizes resources before moving ahead. Using this approach and prose that is superior to many similar books, the author crafts a specific, comprehensible description of the elements that contribute to climate change and what needs to be done. Six chapters propose six solutions. Few will surprise readers (“Electrify Transportation,” “Clean Up Industry,” “Protect Nature,” “Remove Carbon”), although “Fix Food” requires major changes in agriculture as well as our diet, cooking, and waste disposal. Throughout, readers are guided by ingenious illustrations and often startling facts—e.g., China and the U.S. rank No. 1 and No. 2 in greenhouse gas production, followed by the world’s 1 billion cows. The concluding four chapters describe how to meet zero emissions. “We need a quantum leap in speed and scale,” writes the author, “unprecedented sums on a very tight schedule...as much as $1.7 trillion each year—and we’ll need to go full throttle for twenty years or more.” While acknowledging obstacles, Doerr points out that the world is moving in the right direction. Governments (China and the EU if not the U.S.) have approved green policies with definite goals, and mass movements have persuaded innumerable businesses to promise zero emissions—whether they deliver will be critical. Entrepreneurs are paying attention. In January 2021, their clean technology investments exceeded the total for all of 2015.
Yet another prospective solution to climate change, but one of the most feasible.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-42047-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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