As I noted elsewhere, I picked this book up for .25 at a book sale with the intention to argue with it. Although I enjoyed Steven Pinker's works on language, which I read many years ago, I was vaguely aware that he was in the Rational Optimist camp, and this book was his argument in favor of this perspective. The Rational Optimist perspective is that the situation for humans right now is great, better than it has ever been, and many problems that still exist will be solved through human ingenuity, IFF we are careful to keep in place the mechanisms, such as free expression, patent law, and globalization that have worked so well thus far. Some others in this camp would be Matt Ridley, "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves", Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler "Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think", Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge "Capitalism in America: A History", Julian Simon "The Ultimate Resource", and representative in field of agriculture would be Norman Borlaug (given much direct credit for the Green Revolution which modernized and globalized methods.)
Obviously, "ERE" the book and EREcology is meant to be at a Yellow level beyond the debate between the most Doomer and the most Optimist, because it includes Capitalism in its repertoire. Jacob wrote somewhere that even though his perspective is more towards the pessimistic, the ERE system will just default to render its adherents super-rich if the Rational Optimists are correct or we get lucky as a species. Some representatives of more pessimistic outlook would be William Catton "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change", Kunstler "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century", Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander, "This Civilization is Finished: Conversations on the End of Empire- and What Lies Beyond", Roy Scranton "We're Doomed. Now What?: Essays on War and Climate Change" etc. (I have read at least a couple dozen books in the pessimistic mode, many more than in the optimistic mode, because less in alignment with our common culture and my usually cheerful eNTP disposition.) An overly simplistic generalization of the pessimistic perspective would be that we are using up stuff (dispersing materials in manner that renders them far less useful or retrievable), creating and dumping waste, destroying complex eco-systems, and burning up irreplaceable dense fossil fuel energy reserves at unsustainable rates, and the hyper-efficient, extremely intertwined technological and social complexity we have created through our joint "invisible hand" efforts to improve our lives just renders us ever more vulnerable to eventual collapse.
Strong adherents to either the Optimist or Pessimist camp, including Steven Pinker in "Enlightenment Now", can become very aggressive in their arguments, because "Growth is good and best possibility for our salvation!" and "Unrestrained growth is bad and the further we proceed with madness, the more violent the collapse is likely to be!" are perspectives that are believed to be irreconcilable and therefore like unto kryptonite to each other. For instance, he refers to "Limits to Growth" (Meadows, Meadows, Randers) as a philippic, deifies Borlaug in a section of the book that includes a chart of scientists and how many human lives they were responsible for saving, crows about how Julian Simon won the bet about resource prices against Paul Ehrlich ("The Population Bomb"), and strongly cautions parents against exposing their children to any pessimistic perspectives.
That said, I found his perspective to overall be more moderate and nuanced than that of others in the optimistic camp. For instance, he admits that climate change is going to be seriously difficult problem to overcome, which will definitely demand careful coordinated effort. He is in favor of carbon tax, small offshore generation 4 nuclear installations, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and climate engineering that is "moderate, responsive, and temporary." He is hopeful about recent trends in wealthy countries towards decarbonization and dematerialization of the economy. He cautions against just writing the situation off as hopeless and embarking on last chance burn it up bacchanalia. And, although much of his argument is just chart after chart of upwardly trending uni-factor statistics, a good deal of his thinking is tending more towards systems level. For instance, his notes on the necessary interactions and growth of social institutions along with technological advances. He is definitely in the Classical Liberal as opposed to Libertarian camp. His discussion about how more democratic property law was necessary precondition for growth of ingenuity/innovation seemed to me a good point against the argument that the huge upswing in human prosperity and population since 1780 is almost all due to exploitation of fossil fuel and New World resources. Afte rall, human ingenuity did exist for 50,000 years before The Enlightenment/Early Industrial Age, but so did the coal and the oil. Why was neither fully tapped until this critical junction?
Another seemingly very anti-ERE section of the book is the chapter on Happiness in which Pinker obliterates the Easterlin Paradox. This paradox was based on research which suggested that there is an end to the amount of happiness that can be achieved through increases to income/wealth. Pinker presents more recent research that demonstrates that the happiness does keep increasing with increased income/wealth, at both national and individual levels, but this increase is only proportional, not absolute, so that is why it didn't register in earlier, less big data driven, analysis. Going from 1 million to 10 million in your stock account is as likely to make you happier as going from $1 to $10 in your wallet, but this is not as likely to occur. He also presents a good deal of evidence that worries about modern life leading to depression, suicide, ennui are over-hyped. OTOH, he goes on to discuss the difference between Happiness and Meaning, and I think many on this forum would agree with this:
People who lead happy but not necessarily meaningful lives have al their needs satisfied: they are healthy, have enough money, and feel good a lot of the time. People who lead meaningful lives may enjoy none of these boons. Happy people live in the present; those with meaningful lives have a narrative about their past and a plan for the future. Those with happy but meaningless lives are takers and beneficiaries; those with meaningful but unhappy lives are givers and benefactors. Parents get meaning from their children, but not necessarily happiness. Time spent with friends makes a life happier; time spent with loved ones makes it more meaningful. Stress, worry, arguments, challenges and struggles make a life unhappier but more meaningful. It's note that people with meaningful lives masochistically go looking for trouble but that they pursue ambitious goals: "Man plans and God laughs." Finally, meaning is about expressing rather than satisfying the self: it is enhanced by activities that define the person and build a reputation.
In conclusion, although I found this book a bit of an easy and annoying read, there were enough nuggets of information and insight to keep me interested. It also helped me regain a bit of perspective that would have helped me avoid getting into another argument with my strongly Orange/Green Native New Yorker PhD scientist brother-in-law which ended with him condescendingly noting that people who live in Michigan (like me) are more likely to believe in upcoming collapse. But, actually I probably deserved this because I suggested that it might be fun/funny to go to the weekly fish fry in the town most associated with the militia. IOW, just like it's not yet safe to be post-feminist, it's also not yet safe to be post-enlightenment, because you will very often be mistaken for pre.