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.

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

Over the last ten years Dr Samuel Alexander has been a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Critical Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ as part of the Master of Environment. He has also been a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and is currently co-Director of the Simplicity Institute. Alexander’s interdisciplinary research focuses on degrowth, permaculture, voluntary simplicity, ‘grassroots’ theories of transition, and the relationship between culture and political economy. His current research is exploring the aesthetics of degrowth and energy descent futures. His books include Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2019, co-authored with Brendan Gleeson); Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future (2018, co-authored with Josh Floyd); Art Against Empire: Toward an Aesthetics of Degrowth (2017); Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics (2016); Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes (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); he is also 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). In 2016 he also released a documentary called A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity, co-produced with Jordan Osmond of Happen Films. Alexander blogs at www.simplicitycollective.com.