Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update
D. Meadows, J. Randers, D. Meadows
Chelsea Green Pub. Co., 2004
In 1972 four young scientists at MIT wrote a book
called The Limits to Growth, which shocked the world and became an
international best-seller. Using the World3 computer model, the authors
looked toward the future and sounded an alarm, for the first time
showing the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet. Their
book gained worldwide attention and became the cornerstone of a global
debate o how to achieve a sustainable future.
Twenty years later the authors wrote Beyond the
Limits, a follow-up volume that showed humanity was already overshooting
Earth’s limits. Beyond the Limits again provoked a national debate and
galvanized scientific and environmental academic leaders to incorporate
The Limits to Growth into the core environmental studies curriculum.
Now Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update brings
data on overshoot and global ecological collapse to the present moment.
It provides a short course in the World3 computer model, types of
growth, and the various kinds of over-shoot likely to occur in the
current century. While it remains to be seen whether public policy will
respond effectively and in time to problems such as climate change, this
book makes compellingly clear the vital need for a sustainability
revolution.
Affluenza
The All-Consuming Epidemic
By John De Graff, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially
transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting
from the dogged pursuit of more. Based on two highly acclaimed PBS
documentaries, Affluenza uses the metaphor of a disease to tackle a very
serious subject: the damage done B to our health, our families, our
communities, and our environment B by the obsessive quest for material
gain.
Affluenza presents the symptoms B stress of excess,
family convulsions, dilated pupils, resource exhaustion B along with
their historical and cultural origins. Most importantly, the book
explores causes and cures, such as the Anew frugality and voluntary
simplicity movements, suggest strategies for rebuilding families and
communities and for restoring and respecting the earth.
Engaging, fast-paced and accessible, Affluenza
takes a hard look at a complex and serious issue, revealing ways of
living and working that make more sense and are, ultimately, more
satisfying. After all, the best things in life aren’t things.
Quick Reads
Believing Cassandra, Alan AtKisson,
Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1999.
How Much is Enough?, Alan Durning,
W.W. Norton & Co., 1992.
Material World, Peter Menzel, Sierra
Club Books, 1994.
Overspent American, Juliet Schor,
Basic Books, 1998.
Seven Wonders: Everyday Things for a
Healthier Planet, John Ryan, Northwest Environment Watch, 1999.
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things,
John Ryan and Alan Durning, Northwest Environment Watch, 1997
Headier Works
Beyond Growth, Herman Daly, Island
Press, 1996.
Beyond the Limits, Donella Meadows,
et al., Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992.
The Consumer Society, Neva Goodwin,
et al.(editors), Island Press, 1997.
Environmentally Significant Consumption,
Paul Stern, et al.(editors), National Academy Press, 1997.
Human Development Report 1998, United
Nations Development Programme, 1998.
Population and Consumption Task Force Report,
The President’s Council on Sustainable Development, 1996
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