Interesting! I found it to be almost too optimistic or unbelievably hopeful.

Same here. I think I hadn't ever felt so hopeful for the future as I was while reading that book. I doubt that our world will turn out so positive.

It will likely come out somewhere in between our fears and our hopes. So it's good that we double down on imagining hopeful scenarios. Makes it easier to realize them.

Not so sure. Russia arranged a lot of "worst case scenarios" for all of us. It will take a lot of effort to get to "okay" again.

In current times it's very strange not to include the US in such claims...

Kim Stanley Robinson's books are all like that - a near/mid term crisis you can easily relate with, often caused by climate change, that eventually people rise up to kinda resolve, putting it on a hopeful trajectory. Lots of expressing of human best qualities along the way. Similar to the Culture in this.