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Montreal native and McGill alumnus Steven Pinker is returning home this week to promote his latest book, Enlightenment Now.

In his previous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker argues that violence has declined globally across human history. Now, he expands this celebration of progress driven by Enlightenment values of reason and science to virtually all aspects of life, concluding with optimism for the future. Using a litany of data-driven figures and impartial reasoning, his mission is to banish what he sees as an illusion of global bleakness.

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Pinker is right to draw our attention to recent worldwide victories in health and well-being. But we are dismayed to see a critical weakness in Pinker’s discussion of the most perilous downside to such progress. As members of a generation born into accelerating disruption of environmental systems, we face the possible erosion of our well-being by climate change and ecosystem collapse within our lifetimes.