Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to drop, and governments stagger under record deficits. "The End of Growth" proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable, natural limits. Richard Heinberg's latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we ...
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Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to drop, and governments stagger under record deficits. "The End of Growth" proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable, natural limits. Richard Heinberg's latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes. Written in an engaging, highly readable style, it shows why growth is being blocked by three factors: Resource depletion, Environmental impacts, and Crushing levels of debt. These converging limits will force us to re-evaluate cherished economic theories, and to reinvent money and commerce. "The End of Growth" describes what policy makers, communities and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth's budget of energy and resources. We can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than continuing to pursue the now-unattainable prize of ever-expanding Gross Domestic Product.
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Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 320 p. Contains: Line drawings, black & white, Figures, Charts. May show signs of wear, highlighting, writing, and previous use. This item may be a former library book with typical markings. No guarantee on products that contain supplements Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Twenty-five year bookseller with shipments to over fifty million happy customers.
After reading Joseph Tainter's excellent and influential The Collapse of Complex Societies, I looked forward to reading Heinberg's The End of Growth. Big disappointment.
Heinberg doesn't so much present a coherent analysis as pastiche of sources -- some academically respectable, others self-proclaimed. Many of his assertions have been commonplace for the last 40 years -- the earth is a closed system with resource limits, we are running out of fossil fuels and there is no ready substitute, national debt has caused instability in international currency, an so forth. Lacking original thought or thesis, Heinberg opts for a kitchen sink approach by trying to cover finance, energy, food, the environment -- all this in a breezy Sunday newspaper style.
The most objectionable part of this book is how Heinberg has omitted important information. For example, Tainter concludes his archeology classic by asserting that in the contemporary world, no single complex society can fail without being absorbed by adjoining complex societies. Instead, Heinberg intimates that complex societies planet-wide could very well collapse, and we should organize into self-help co-ops. Of he course touts his web-site and back-yard think-tank so the reader may access his updates. Like peak oil pundit James Kunstler (the Long Emergency), Heinberg seems to be feathering his own nest in the Dystopian Alarmist Industry.
To be sure, all the issues in Heinberg's book are important, but there is better information available elsewhere.
