By Ugo Bardi, The Seneca Effect
"The Limits to Growth" was a study of the future of the global economy. Its basic message was that growth could not continue to go on forever on a finite planet.
By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org
While policy makers have failed to prevent sustainability crises that have already begun and will almost certainly worsen throughout the remainder of the century, further inaction just ensures the worst possible outcome.
By B, The Honest Sorcerer
Only after accepting that there are hard limits has humanity a chance to change course and adopt to a drastically changing landscape. Whether we can do that, is question to be pondered…
By Jan Juffermans, Resilience.org
It remains to be seen whether we will be able to effectively tackle the major challenges of nature and the environment in time. But the opportunities to do so will undoubtedly increase significantly.
By Tom Murphy, Do the Math
It turns out that what’s good for humans (in the short term) is not necessarily good for nature. In our current—utterly unsustainable—mode, choices that are thought to be good for humans are usually decidedly terrible choices for the planet and therefore ultimately bad for us, too. Take care of the real world first, and then you can have dessert.
By John Feffer, Foreign Policy In Focus
The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world.
By Adrian Ayres Fisher, Ecological Gardening
It’s past time to quit the cowboy economics, to hang up the hats and put away the spurs. To salvage both nature and humanity, pretty much everything about how we conduct human society must change. So what are you doing to help? I mean actually doing?
By Richard E. Vodra, Advisor Perspectives
We get a startling overview of a self-directing complex system integrating economics and the physical world in Carey King’s recent book: The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy.
By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia
Maybe we need to let go of the comforts of fashionable cynicism and find the courage to affirm such things again. Maybe a prayer for nonbelievers, to quote a line from the song, is what we need just now. We’ll just have to see.
By Andrew Curry, thenextwave
The choice is that either we end up with unmanaged decline, which would be catastrophic, or a managed levelling out of our economies, shaped by a shift in social values and expectations.
By Juan Bordera Romá, Fastlove Studios
We have to assume that we have reached the century of limits, and the current model is no good for us. We have to plan and try to redistribute while reducing our impact.
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Richard Heinberg
The “maximum power principle” may sound like the doctrine of an evil supervillain, but it actually applies to all living creatures. The principle states that biological systems organize to increase power whenever constraints allow.