Limits to Growth: An Update

By Samuel Alexander, originally published by A Simpler Way

September 9, 2015

NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.

Image Removed

Below is the next instalment of the interview series Jordan Osmond and I are releasing as part of the crowd-funding campaign for our documentary, A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity. Thank you to all the generous souls who have helped us reach our first goal in 18 days! For more information on the documentary or to make a donations, please see here.

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The 1972 book, Limits to Growth, is the best-selling environmental book of all time, and deservedly so. Recently I had the privilege of interviewing Dr Graham Turner, the scientist who has done the most work updating the data underpinning the original Limits to Growth analysis. His conclusions are not always comforting, but surely its better to have a clear grasp of the situation than sleepwalk over the edge. Only then can we be in a position to formulate appropriate responses. I highly recommend spending the time listening to Graham’s thoughtful analysis of the current state of the world. There is no better authority in the world on this important subject.

Samuel Alexander

Dr. Samuel Alexander, co-director of the Simplicity Institute, is a lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Critical Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ into the Master of Environment. He is also a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. He is author of eighteen books, including Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2018), Art Against Empire: Toward an Aesthetics of Degrowth (2017), Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics (2016), Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015), Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever (2015), and Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation (2013), and he is editor of Voluntary Simplicity: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (2009) and co-editor of Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future (2014). A full publication list is available here.

As well as his academic work, in recent years Sam has been working on a ‘simpler way’ demonstration project which became the subject of a documentary, ‘A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity‘. He is also founder of the Simplicity Collective, a website and social network dedicated to exploring the relationships between voluntary simplicity, energy descent, and post-growth / degrowth economics.  Dr. Alexander’s PhD thesis, conducted through Melbourne Law School, is entitled “Property beyond Growth: Toward a Politics of Voluntary Simplicity”.

Tags: limits to growth, new economy, powering down

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