Planet in Peril

Michael Bess is Chancellor's Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He has been teaching award-winning courses on science, technology, environmentalism, and global catastrophic threats since 1989, and has written four other books on these topics. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and National Human Genome Research Institute.

1. Introduction; Part I. Existential Threats: The Four Most Pressing Dangers Facing Humankind: 2. Fossil fuels and climate change; 3. Nukes for war and peacetime; 4. Pandemics, natural or bioengineered; 5. Artificial intelligence: extreme reward and risk; Part II. Strategies and Obstacles: The Solutions We Need, and What's Preventing them from Being Realized: 6. How to beat climate change; 7. Wise governance for nukes and pandemics: where to go faster and where to slow down; 8. Controlling things vs. controlling agents: the challenge of high-level AI 160; 9. The international dimension: where every solution stumbles; Prologue to Parts III, IV, and V: Does history have a direction? Hegel, Smith, Darwin; Part III. Sensible Steps for Today's World: Powerful Measures we Can Implement Right Away: 10. Do it now: five points of leverage; 11. Constructive moves on the international front for the next 25 years; 12. Breaking the political logjam; 13. Lessons from the green movement: how to build lasting change in the absence of full consensus; Part IV. The Middle-Term Goal: New International Tools for the Late 21st Century: 14. A promising track record: the dramatic growth of international institutions and networks since 1900; 15. How to escape the sovereignty trap: lessons and limitations of the EU Model; 16. Taking the UN up a notch: planet-level solutions for the year 2100; 17. The other path to 2100: ruthless competition, fingers crossed; Part V. The Long-Term Goal: Envisioning a Mature System of Global Governance for the 22nd Century: 18. Global government in a world of democracies and dictatorships: what it might look like in 2150; 19. Keeping the system accountable and fair; 20. Collective military security and economic sanctions: how to handle rogues, cheaters, and fanatics; 21. What could go wrong?; 22. Conclusion.