The great disruption

Growth as we’ve known it is over, Paul Gilding and Richard Heinberg told a Climate One audience in San Francisco on November 7. Confronted by resource constraints and crippling debt, nations must instead focus on growth that respects nature’s limits.

“The idea that we can keep on growing the economy up against the physical limits of the Earth” – water, oil, and land – “is not physically possible,” said Paul Gilding, Professor, University of Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership, and author, The Great Disruption.

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, and author, The End of Growth, [said]…”“We have to create an economy that exists within nature’s limits,” he said. “We’ve been borrowing from the past, by way of fossil fuels. We’re also borrowing from future generations, by way of debt – all so that we can consumer as much as possible right now.””