Limits to Growth

Just over 30 years ago a path-breaking book was published called The Limits to Growth. It posited the then controversial idea that unlimited growth on a finite planet would inevitably lead to ecological collapse. The book became a surprise international best-seller and was translated into more than a dozen languages. In 1992 Chelsea Green published Beyond the Limits bringing the data and the systems analysis up to date. Now Limits to Growth: The 30 year Update takes the analysis into the first decade of the 21st century to show that while the situation remains precarious, there is still time to bring the Earth back from the brink of ecological collapse.

A woman whose pioneering work in the 1970s still makes front-page news, Donella Meadows was a scientist, author, teacher, and farmer widely considered ahead of her time. She was one of the world's foremost systems analysts and lead author of the influential Limits to Growth--the 1972 book on global trends in population, economics, and the environment that was translated into 28 languages and became an international bestseller. That book launched a worldwide debate on the earth's capacity to withstand constant human development and expansion. Twenty years later, she and co-authors Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers reported on their follow-up study in Beyond the Limits and a final revision of their research, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, was published in 2004.

Review of Limits to Growth: The 30-Year UpdateBy John N. CooperFrom AxisofLogic.comFeb 13, 2005This is a wonderful book. Originally published in 1972 as "Limits to Growth" and refreshed in 1992 in "Beyond the Limits," the authors have now issued a 30-year appraisal [Chelsea Green Publishing, ISBN 1-931498-58-X], in which they examine the progress made both in their understanding of the mechanisms underlying the impact of humanity on the world ecology and of steps taken toward remediating the accelerating approach to trainwreck that is mankind's ill-managed and uncontrolled 'footprint' on this planet's environment.Briefly, humanity has overshot the limits of what is physically and biologically sustainable. That overshoot WILL lead to the collapse of the planetary environment's ability to support not only our species but much of the rest of the biosphere if we do not act rapidly and effectively to reduce our footprint. These conclusions provide reasons for both optimism and alarm: optimi