My Rating: 9 /10
Title: Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming (Amazon Link)
Author: McKenzie Funk

I feel like this was a really important book for me to read. For the past ten years I have been reading non-stop about climate change. The science, the politics, the technologies and economics. This reading has significantly shaped the path I have taken through life. So it’s refreshing to come across a book that comes at this topic from a new perspective. Who is going to profit when the predictions come true?

“This book is about how we’re preparing for the world we seem hell-bent on creating. It’s about climate change, but not the science of it, nor the politics, nor directly about how we can or why we should stop it. Instead, it’s about bets being placed on a simple, cynical premise: that we won’t stop it anytime soon. It’s about people like me: northerners from the developed world – historically the emitter countries, as we’re called – who occupy the high, dry ground, whether real or metaphorical.” – Excerpt from the book
Continue reading →

My Rating: 9 /10
Title: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to build the Future (Amazon Link)
Authors: Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

“If nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.”

Zero to One covers a lot of ground, but upon reflection the core principle presented is that innovation is required for real societal change to occur. Globalisation and competition are simply expanding the systems we already know; taking us from 1 to n, while at the same time spreading a pool of profits more thinly over a larger number of people.

Innovation and technology development provides new systems that the world hasn’t seen before; providing new sources of wealth and livelihood. Importantly, it takes us from us from 0 to 1.

Continue reading →