In recent decades, we have seen five perilous and interlocking trends dominate global discourse: irreversible climate change, extreme food and water shortages, rising chronic illnesses, and rampant obesity. Why can't we make any progress in counteracting these problems despite vast expenditures of intellectual, institutional, and social capital? What makes these global emergencies the "wicked problems" that resist our best efforts and only grow more daunting?
Daniel Callahan, noted author and the nation's preeminent scholar in bioethics, examines these global problems and shines a light on the institutions, practices, and actors that block major change. We see partisan political and ideological forces, old-fashioned hucksters, and trumped-up scientific disagreements but also the problem of modern progress itself. Obesity, anthropogenic climate change, degenerative diseases, ecological degradation, and global famine are often the unintended consequences of unchecked industrial growth, insatiable eating habits, and technologically extended life spans. Only through well-crafted political, regulatory, industrial, and cultural counterstrategies can we change enough minds to check these threats. With big thinking on issues that are usually evaluated separately, this book is sure to scramble partisan divides and provoke unusual, heated debate.
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- I. Mapping an Irregular Terrain
- 1. Our Overheating, Fraying Planet
- 2. Feeding a Growing Population: How, and with What Kind of Food?
- 3. Water: Not Everywhere and Not Always Fit to Drink
- 4. Chronic Illness: Rich or Poor, Few Escape
- 5. Obesity: The Scourge of Bad Diets and Sedentary Habits
- II. Examining the Pathways Through the Thickets
- 6. Always More People and Ever More Elderly: Caring and Paying
- 7. The Technology Fix: A Way Out?
- 8. A Volatile Mix: Public Policy, the Media, and Public Opinion
- 9. Law and Governance: Managing Our Public Planet and Our Private Bodies
- III. Toward the Future: Progress, Hope, and Fear
- 10. Progress and Its Errant Children: More Is Never Enough
- 11. The Necessary Coalition: Social Movements, Legislatures, and Business
- Notes
- Index
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