Indur Goklany makes a positive case for globalisation and industrialisation, says Deborah Coddington in The New Zealand Herald today. His book, The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, renders facts about material development in a more favourable light than is generally the case.

The world's poor, he reckons, now enjoy the most dramatic rise in their standard of living. And, telling us something many of us already know, as countries have abandoned communism, state control and/or poverty, they have become more environmentally clean and their people more healthy.

Having visited China several times, this is something I already knew. But in an age of deathly doomsayers who endlessly pour climate-change into our living rooms, it is nice to hear someone else ringing the same bells.

The statistics Coddington quotes speak for themselves. As for climate-change, I personally see no evidence that it is caused by industrial activity. In Chaucer's day they grew grapes in southern England. In the time of Elizabeth I, the Thames would freeze over in the winter-time and the people would hold fairs on the ice. Climate-change is a fact of life, and not necessarily a result of carbon emissions.

Initially reviewed by Allister Heath in The Spectator, the book seems to bear a welcome message. It augurs well for peace and prosperity into the future.

In response to Heath's review, one letter-writer claims that climate-change is the new Christianity, a gospel that is aligned with the dominant force in modern culture (science) that "is so easily accepted by the non-church-attending masses". The state, as always, follows, says Paul Horgan.