Astronomer Royal’s rallying call for rational thinking about how we can shape our own destiny.
"The world is changing so fast that Martin Rees is probably justified in revisiting the same territory he covered in the 2003 book that he wanted to call ‘Our Final Century?’. As he admits, his UK publisher persuaded him to remove the question mark, while US readers got ‘Our Final Hour’.
Despite describing himself as a techno-optimist, Rees predicted that when all the risks were taken into account, there was only a 50 per cent chance that humanity would reach the end of the 21st century without experiencing a disastrous setback. It was a speculative argument, but based on compelling evidence. We’ve reached the first century in the 45 million for which the Earth has been around in which one species alone can determine the planet’s fate."
