Author: Ugo Bardi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441994165
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
“The Limits to Growth” (Meadows, 1972) generated unprecedented controversy with its predictions of the eventual collapse of the world's economies. First hailed as a great advance in science, “The Limits to Growth” was subsequently rejected and demonized. However, with many national economies now at risk and global peak oil apparently a reality, the methods, scenarios, and predictions of “The Limits to Growth” are in great need of reappraisal. In The Limits to Growth Revisited, Ugo Bardi examines both the science and the polemics surrounding this work, and in particular the reactions of economists that marginalized its methods and conclusions for more than 30 years. “The Limits to Growth” was a milestone in attempts to model the future of our society, and it is vital today for both scientists and policy makers to understand its scientific basis, current relevance, and the social and political mechanisms that led to its rejection. Bardi also addresses the all-important question of whether the methods and approaches of “The Limits to Growth” can contribute to an understanding of what happened to the global economy in the Great Recession and where we are headed from there.
The Limits to Growth
Author: Donella H. Meadows
Publisher: Universe Pub
ISBN: 9780876632222
Category : Economic development.
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs
Publisher: Universe Pub
ISBN: 9780876632222
Category : Economic development.
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs
Scarcity and Growth Revisited
Author: R. David Professor Simpson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113652472X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth‘s limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book‘s more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113652472X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth‘s limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book‘s more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate.
Flourishing Within Limits to Growth
Author: Sven Erik Jørgensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317552008
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
Decades of research and discussion have shown that the human population growth and our increased consumption of natural resources cannot continue – there are limits to growth. This volume demonstrates how we might modify and revise our economic systems using nature as a model. The book describes how nature uses three growth forms: biomass, information, and networks, resulting in improved overall ecosystem functioning and co-development. As biomass growth is limited by available resources, nature uses the two other growth forms to achieve higher resource use efficiency. Through a universal application of the three ‘R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle, nature thus shows us a way forward towards better solutions. However, our current approach, dominated by short-term economic thinking, inhibits full utilization of the three ‘R’s and other successful approaches from nature. Building on ecological principles, the authors present a global model and futures scenario analyses which show that implementation of the proposed changes will lead to a win-win situation. In other words, we can learn from nature how to develop a society that can flourish within the limits to growth with better conditions for prosperity and well-being.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317552008
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
Decades of research and discussion have shown that the human population growth and our increased consumption of natural resources cannot continue – there are limits to growth. This volume demonstrates how we might modify and revise our economic systems using nature as a model. The book describes how nature uses three growth forms: biomass, information, and networks, resulting in improved overall ecosystem functioning and co-development. As biomass growth is limited by available resources, nature uses the two other growth forms to achieve higher resource use efficiency. Through a universal application of the three ‘R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle, nature thus shows us a way forward towards better solutions. However, our current approach, dominated by short-term economic thinking, inhibits full utilization of the three ‘R’s and other successful approaches from nature. Building on ecological principles, the authors present a global model and futures scenario analyses which show that implementation of the proposed changes will lead to a win-win situation. In other words, we can learn from nature how to develop a society that can flourish within the limits to growth with better conditions for prosperity and well-being.
Growth in Transition
Author: Friedrich Hinterberger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136505997
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
Stimulating growth through adjusting macroeconomic conditions remains the principal policy responses to pressing problems of unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation. However, are the current policy approaches capable of tackling these problems by generating win-win solutions or are they the root causes of these problems? The current growth trajectory has neither lead to a reduction of our overall resource use – as we use resources and energy more efficiently we consume more – nor create the conditions for employment and well-being. Increasingly, there is the realization that it is necessary to make substantial interventions into our national economies and create better framework conditions and incentive systems in order to more widely and rapidly develop and disseminate workable, innovative solutions for realizing sustainable development. This is the task of politics, and the concrete design of the measures must be built upon a broad public debate and shared long-term visions. The authors of this book intend to trigger a dialogue among stakeholders about how we can shape this transformation process towards sustainability. Following a detailed presentation of the key arguments for reconsidering the necessary conditions for sustainable economies, an international cast of commentators from politics, administration, civil society, business and science engage with the central question: is there an alternative trajectory for Western economies that sustains wellbeing whilst confronting ecological and social breakdown?
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136505997
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
Stimulating growth through adjusting macroeconomic conditions remains the principal policy responses to pressing problems of unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation. However, are the current policy approaches capable of tackling these problems by generating win-win solutions or are they the root causes of these problems? The current growth trajectory has neither lead to a reduction of our overall resource use – as we use resources and energy more efficiently we consume more – nor create the conditions for employment and well-being. Increasingly, there is the realization that it is necessary to make substantial interventions into our national economies and create better framework conditions and incentive systems in order to more widely and rapidly develop and disseminate workable, innovative solutions for realizing sustainable development. This is the task of politics, and the concrete design of the measures must be built upon a broad public debate and shared long-term visions. The authors of this book intend to trigger a dialogue among stakeholders about how we can shape this transformation process towards sustainability. Following a detailed presentation of the key arguments for reconsidering the necessary conditions for sustainable economies, an international cast of commentators from politics, administration, civil society, business and science engage with the central question: is there an alternative trajectory for Western economies that sustains wellbeing whilst confronting ecological and social breakdown?
Growth Triumphant
Author: Richard A. Easterlin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472023551
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Taking a longer view than most literature on economic development, Richard A. Easterlin stresses the enormous contrast between the collective experience of the last half century in both developed and developing countries and what has gone before. An economic historian and demographer, the author writes in the tradition of the "new economic history," drawing on economic theory and quantitative evidence to interpret the historical experience of economic theory and population growth. He reaches beyond the usual disciplinary limits to draw, as appropriate, on sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and the history of science. The book will be of interest not only to social scientists but to all readers concerned with where we have been and where we are going. ". . . Easterlin is both an economic historian and a demographer, and it is the combination of these two disciplines and the fine balance between theory and experience that make this well-written, refreshingly optimistic book excellent reading." --Population and Development Review "In this masterful synthesis, Richard Easterlin draws on the disciplines of economic history, demography, sociology, political science, psychology, and the history of science to present an integrated explation of the origins of modern economic growth and of the mortality revolution. . . . His book should be easily accessible to non-specialists and will give them a sense of why economic history can inform our understanding of the future." --Dora L. Costa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EH.Net and H-Net "Growth Triumphant is, simply, a fascinating book. Easterlin has woven together a history of economic growth, economic development, human mortality and morbidity, the connections each has with the others, and the implications of this nexus of forces on the future. . . . This book deserves a wide audience." --Choice "In what must surely be the most fair-minded, well-balanced, and scrupulously reasoned and researched book on the sensational subjects implied in its title--the Industrial Revolution, the mortality and fertility revolutions, and the prospects for future happiness for the human race--Professor Easterlin has set in place the capstone of his research career." --Journal of Economic History Richard A. Easterlin is Professor of Economics, University of Southern California.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472023551
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Taking a longer view than most literature on economic development, Richard A. Easterlin stresses the enormous contrast between the collective experience of the last half century in both developed and developing countries and what has gone before. An economic historian and demographer, the author writes in the tradition of the "new economic history," drawing on economic theory and quantitative evidence to interpret the historical experience of economic theory and population growth. He reaches beyond the usual disciplinary limits to draw, as appropriate, on sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and the history of science. The book will be of interest not only to social scientists but to all readers concerned with where we have been and where we are going. ". . . Easterlin is both an economic historian and a demographer, and it is the combination of these two disciplines and the fine balance between theory and experience that make this well-written, refreshingly optimistic book excellent reading." --Population and Development Review "In this masterful synthesis, Richard Easterlin draws on the disciplines of economic history, demography, sociology, political science, psychology, and the history of science to present an integrated explation of the origins of modern economic growth and of the mortality revolution. . . . His book should be easily accessible to non-specialists and will give them a sense of why economic history can inform our understanding of the future." --Dora L. Costa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EH.Net and H-Net "Growth Triumphant is, simply, a fascinating book. Easterlin has woven together a history of economic growth, economic development, human mortality and morbidity, the connections each has with the others, and the implications of this nexus of forces on the future. . . . This book deserves a wide audience." --Choice "In what must surely be the most fair-minded, well-balanced, and scrupulously reasoned and researched book on the sensational subjects implied in its title--the Industrial Revolution, the mortality and fertility revolutions, and the prospects for future happiness for the human race--Professor Easterlin has set in place the capstone of his research career." --Journal of Economic History Richard A. Easterlin is Professor of Economics, University of Southern California.
World on the Edge
Author: Lester Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113654075X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113654075X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.