Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century--On Earth and Beyond (Hardcover)

Rees begins with familiar threats from nuclear and biological weapons, noting Fred Ikle's view that only an oppressive police state could assure total government control over novel tools of mass destruction. Rees then turns to the implications of genetic engineering, including the creation of new forms of life that could feed off other materials in our environment. Thanks to genetic engineering, the nature of humans could begin to change within this century; human character and physique will soon be malleable. The potential threats may remind some readers of Frank Herbert's novel The White Plague, in which a lone scientist creates a spectacular method of revenge.

Rees is most effective when he describes the potential implications of scientific experiments, particularly in particle physics. He notes that some experiments are designed to generate conditions more extreme than ever occur naturally. Here readers will learn about the possible human creation of black holes and strangelets. Errors and unpredictable outcomes are a growing cause for worry; calculations of risk are based on probability rather than certainty. Rees tells us that one person's act of irrationality, or even one person's error, could do us all in. That should motivate a circumspect attitude toward technical innovations that pose even a small threat of catastrophic failure, though putting effective brakes on a field of research would require international consensus. Rees speculates that the abandonment of privacy may be the minimal price for maintaining security.

Rees is particularly critical of American attitudes toward science and technology. Commenting that there are some who have a tenuous hold on rationality, he states that "their numbers may grow in the US." Later in the book, he writes that in the US "bizarre beliefs seem almost part of the mainstream." The United States is hardly the only source of irrational people.

Rees then turns to more conventional futurism, discussing the search for extraterrestrial life and human expansion into the solar system. He implicitly advocates that humans should establish colonies beyond the Earth to assure that the species will survive a disaster on its home planet.

There are some errors. Rees writes that the Challenger explosion took place in 1987; it actually was a year earlier. He describes Gerard O'Neill as an engineering professor; O'Neill actually was a professor of physics. Rees links the SETI at Home computer network with the SETI Institute; in fact, that program is associated with Serendip IV, a project invented by professors at the University of California at Berkeley.

Scientists will destroy the world! We've all heard that before, but found it kind of a strange statement coming from one of the more prominent scientists in the world. In "Our Final Hour", however, Rees makes some well-reasoned arguments about the dangers of scientific exploration. Not that we shouldn't explore nature, just that we should be mindful of the risks and take extra precautions.

The book is a quick read, only 228 pages, and takes us through the range of doomsday scenarios that scientists can unleash: environmental disasters that warm/cool the Earth and make it unlivable; bioterrorism that could unleash a plague of germs on the populace; and exotic physics experiments that could convert all matter in the universe into something... unpleasant.

Rees is calm and reasoned in his arguments; at no point does he stray into "science is bad" rants. Instead, he adopts the tone of a scientific professional, concerned about the ethical implications of scientific discovery. But he doesn't argue that science should be slowed down, in fact, Rees believes that it's pretty much impossible to stop scientific development. For every country that has a ban on genetic research, there will be one happy to support it. And technology will allow the tools to create viruses and other nastiness by a much larger group of people - some with nasty intentions.

I guess that's where the book fell down a bit for me. It offers up lots challenges the world could face from science, but it's short on solutions that could help guide policy. I got the impression that Rees feels largely pessimistic that anything can really be done to slow progress, and the inevitable disasters science could cause. It's unrealistic to tell scientists what they can and can't work on; even more difficult to enforce ethical guidelines; and probably impossible to stop technology from falling into the wrong hands. The only hope Rees sees is in human spaceflight - essentially escaping the problem and heading to the stars. That's all well and good, but the Earth is where I keep all my stuff. There's got to be more than that. I was hoping for a much longer book that offered up some deeper policy suggestions, but I suspect the implications are just too far reaching to make realistic suggestions.

Still, it's an interesting read.