A Bright Future starts with a bang. “Few books can credibly claim to offer a way to save the world, but this one does,” the psychologist Steven Pinker writes in his foreword. That is a bold assertion, but by the time I had finished the book, I was half-convinced he was right.
The threat from which the world needs to be saved here is catastrophic climate change, and the solution propounded is a huge expansion of nuclear power. Authors Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist argue that only a massive investment in new reactors can simultaneously allow both the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed to limit global warming, and the increased access to energy needed to raise living standards in lower-income countries.
The book is a punchy polemic that spends its first four chapters making the case for nuclear; another five knocking down alternatives and any objections; and a conclusion setting out how to make the vision a reality. It is unfortunate, but probably unavoidable, that it gets progressively less convincing as it goes on.