Pinkers central thesis is that Humans are in better shape than they think they are and violence, disease and trauma are reducing at scale as economics works out in developing countries.

He isn't arguing that microplastics isn't a problem: he's arguing that the gun death rates, and violent crime as a % of total life experience is in decline and has been for decades.

Mental health may well be at risk from the real polycrisis of aggressive sea level rise, variant weather as a result of AGW, the economic downturn, and of course out at left field is MAD.

But the primary thesis here takes books which express optimism in a very narrowly defined sense and apply it to life overall.

I'm going to die happy. I'm an optimist. I do worry I may die sooner than I want but it's unlikely to be because of violent crime. It may be that I die happy in a food queue for Soylent, but frankly I doubt it, because we're in a crisis of undersupply of babies, not oversupply. If we're on soylent, it will be because the supply chain evergreen problem at scale took hold, not because there are too many of us.

Young people are unhappy because the Boomers (me, basically) ruined the housing market, and we're stealing their future by being stupid. I'd be unhappy about that too if I was in their shoes.