William W. III Behrens

This is the most important book that I have ever read, but 30 years too late! They established in 1972 that we were heading to exceeding our planets capacity to meet our needs. In 2020 they redid their numbers and established that we had now exceeded that point. We are taking far more and dumping too much beyond what our planet can sustain without catastrophic collapses.
To take two simple but self-evident pointers.World population grows exponentially, each new generation is an increase on the previous and then that increase is further increased by the next generation. Our economic regulating system depends on increased consumerism, if we stop buying we are in recession, if the fail to buy more than last time, we are in recession. Add that to the increasing population, that has to be fed, more mouths to feed, more food to be produced and they need to buy to survive, so more goods needed to made and the outcome is simple. Seen from space our planet is very finite. We take, extract, from our planet to make stuff and we dump back on/in our planet all the waste stuff that is not needed or not wanted or when it is no longer useful.
This book explores all the myriad reasoning's that resources are being depleted, or increasing means to extend them, delays to record or implement recovery, feedback loops and accumulating evidence that our broadly stable and favourable environment is tipping into a chaotic system which is unlikely to be favourable to humans. Balanced by sketching out mechanisms and our skill sets we could use to defer, or slow this progress towards that tipping point.
If you do nothing else, make sure you do read Chapters 7 and 8… (más)

The first text in the series appeared as "Limits to growth" in 1972; then the revised edition appeared as "Beyond the limits" in 1992; the current edition of 2004 is a 30-year update.
Contents: Overshoot; The driving force - exponential growth; The limits - sources and sinks; World 3 - the dynamics of growth in a finite world; Back from beyond the limits - the ozone story; Technology, markets and overshoot; Transitions to a sustainable system; Tools for the transition to sustainability; Apendices.… (más)