Further Reading
- Rees does not object to the probabilistic argument for human extinction offered by the Doomsday argument (as championed by John Leslie in the 1996 book The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction (Routledge, hardcover: ISBN 0-415-14043-9, paperback: ISBN 0-415-18447-9)), but he does not consider it to describe the practical threats and solutions that he discusses.
- In The Singularity is Near, Raymond Kurzweil reaches the same conclusion as Rees on the probability of human extinction within the 21st century.
- In the 2004 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking Adult, ISBN 0-670-03337-5), Jared Diamond suggests that Sir Martin's hopes of worldwide cooperation in avoiding extinction scenarios may be in vain.
- Ronald Wright, who quotes Martin Rees with approval in A Short History of Progress (at p. 125–6), is just as pessimistic – much more so than Jared Diamond – and argues that human history reveals a disastrous series of technological progress traps.
Read more about this topic: Our Final Hour
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“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)