Highway to Dystopia: About spaceship Earth, Climate Change and more

by Mathijs Beckers

Highway to Dystopia is a book for people who like big ideas - people who care about freedom, free inquiry, big questions and taboos.
The Earth is our space ship, it placidly zooms around the sun through space. Although the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, we humans came along very late in the game, perhaps one or two hundred thousand years ago. But despite our late arrival, our influence on the Earth has been profound. The Holocene has become the Anthropocene, the age of man, and now, at the crossroads of Religion, Politics, Science and Technology, we have apparently decided to take the Highway to Dystopia, the road into darkness, and ultimately oblivion.

We have created a marvelous civilization (for many) that is full of technology and wonder, but we fail to live in harmony with each other and with nature, and our stewardship over the Earth is failing.

This book tries to connect the dots between Religion, Politics, Science and Technology. It examines the science of Climate Change and looks ahead in an attempt to foresee what we can do to avert the many catastrophes that climate change is already begun to bring.

So, let’s take the next exit. Let’s leave this Highway to Dystopia. We have far more interesting places to explore. Let's embark upon this quest, wherever it takes us.
What can we learn?

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2015

Reviews

[Sander Swart]

This book is easy to read, contains a lot of interesting information I never bothered to learn before and gave me a completely different view on the energy discussion. It’s funny to see how publications by professors can be challenged with common sense and a calculator. This made me want to find out how it’s possible for any idea to exist when so easily changed in a few chapters of a book, a phenomenon also briefly touched by the author.

It further encourages doing your own investigating, as explicitly and repeatedly pushed by the author, and even provides a list of sources you can start with. This push makes good for the few times I couldn’t agree with the reasoning. Definitely a good start for anyone interested in the climate change and energy matters we obviously have to deal with.

[Sydney Chamberlain]

Mathijs did wonderfully with this book. He covers many different controversial topics with an open-minded tone and lots of facts to back up his claims and beliefs. It got me interested in many things I hadn't thought twice about before, and held my attention to the very last page.

It's a great read, and I really like how he challenges the things that most people just take as fact (like I did). It really provokes the reader to continue the investigation that he started, it was a real joy to read!