Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update Paperback – Illustrated, May 27, 2004

I think this book very clearly and understandably describes the bigger problems humanity is facing. I think it is honestly the best book I have read related to Sustainable Development. It is able to cut through the noice around all the discussions of climate change, no climate change, peak oil or no peak oil, overpopulation e.t.c. The book gives a model and a deeper understanding on how every thing is linked together, and a clear picture of how when one variable of the system changes, it will effect all the other variables. I truly cherish this introduction to system dynamics as well.The authors do not claim to have have all the answers, or the perfect model of the world, but he book stills gives a very good picture of linkage, cause and effect in a complex system. Nothing can be said with certainty about future developments, it all rests on the choices we make. This is true for each individual, but also true for the choices we collectively make as a society. What is also true is that whatever we choose, it we will have an effect, and outcome, and we all make these decisions within a systems with certain rules, equations and feedback loops. The rules, equations and feedback-loops for how we operate as a society can be changed by choice, but the responses of the natural world, for what we depend for all we have, can not so easily be changed.I hope to see this book as obligatory reading for any higher education or management training in the future; it really would help the public discourse stay on topic of the really critically discussions, and not so easily get sidetracked and polarized by claims from different special interest groups within the realm of Sustainable Development.

No problems.

It makes so much sense---we are in overshoot on our way to collapse. In such simple and convincing ways, these process engineers lay it out with their updated model and give you a semi-academic vocabulary and analysis that provides a strong critique versus stupid unplanned growth ecomonics. And they show how making substantial yet not impossible changes could change the fortunes and bring us back to a sustainable balance. Do they overly-discount the potential benefits of new technology yet to be discovered to prevent collapse? I hope to hell they do because if there is anything that is clear, it is that human nature has 1) blind faith in new technology to save us (e.g. how else could nuclear power/waste be justified?) and 2) there is no way that humans will make substantial changes prior to collapse--balance will only be achieved afterwards and of course that means it will be less-rational, more-drastic, less-controllable, more-expensive, more-devastating, etc.

The LTG 30-year update is a more rigorous analysis of all the variables affecting the global ecosystem than the original 1972 study. A principal difference, of course, is that advances in computing power have far exceeded probably even the most optimistic expectations in the 1970s, and we can see with greater precision exactly that the effects of our activities are on our tiny planet. Another difference is that many of the trends studied in the initial work can now be confirmed 30 years later.The authors' conclusion is that we have not done much to ameliorate the damage we are doing to Earth, and implicitly to ourselves, by what we have done in the intervening 30 years. We still produce too many offspring, consume too many finite resources, despoil to much of nature's waste-absorbing capacity, and seem to be stuck in a system that inexorably demands still more of the same.But all is not lost. Read this in conjunction with Jordan Randers follow-on study entitled "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years". He uses the same "systems approach" used in this 30-year update. There are solutions, but they will require an informed body politic, thoughtful leadership, and an honest assessment of public policy from all of us.

The 30-year update to "Limits to Growth" is possibly the most thought-provoking environmental book I've ever read. I had not read the original, but knew it was heavily criticized as "hysterical" by free-market enthusiasts, especially economist Julian Simon. So, I wasn't expecting the thoughtful, cautious, and considered analysis of the likely scenarios of an ever-expanding human population facing finite resources. The authors make an excellent point that infinite growth (people, food, water, economy, etc.) is simply not possible. Yet, every politician in the world advocates a policy of never-ending growth.The point of the book is not that we will all die from starvation. The point of the book is that if we do not want to run out of resources and live a miserable existence, we have to start planning now. Excellent book to read for your own education, and in some ways, it serves as an antidote to the popular culture's love affair with growth and consumption at any cost.