The demands on land and resources from our fast-growing cities are unsustainable, as are the wastes they produce. Yet still our leaders act as if unlimited growth is possible.
The earth is a finite place.
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“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has claimed the UK is seeing not just any economic growth, but “the right kind of growth”. But if there a right kind of growth, then there must be the wrong…
Protesters decry the weak outcomes of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil last year.
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After a lifetime promoting sustainability – sadly, with limited success – last year I sat down to consider what will happen to my beloved world over the next 40 years. The main question I asked myself…
Our current trajectory suggests that the world system will realise a decline in living standards.
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In 1972 a group of scientists, known collectively as the Club of Rome, constructed a detailed mathematical model to test whether population growth and economic development could continue indefinitely and…