Now a 30-year update of the book, based on massive amounts of
new date, provides the most comprehensive analysis of our global
future ever assembled. The new 30-year update suggests that the
central problem for the next 70 years will not be averting
environmental decline -- which the authors view as inevitable --
but containing and limiting damage to the planet and humanity.
It's too late for sustainable development, the authors conclude.
The world must now choose between uncontrolled collapse or a
carefully planned reduction of energy and materials consumption,
back down to supportable levels.

The original Limits was compiled by an international team of
experts assembled at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Using
system dynamics theory to construct a global computer model
called "World3," the book presented 12 scenarios that revealed
different possible patterns -- and environmental outcomes -- of
world development from 1900 to 2100. Eventually, The Limits to
Growth became a bestseller with some 9 million copies sold in
more than 30 languages.

The 1972 text was the object of intense criticism by economists
of the time, who dismissed it as Malthusian hyperbole. But
events over the past three decades have turned out to be
remarkably consistent with the 1972 book's scenarios.

The new Limits to Growth, published this spring by Chelsea Green
Publishers, presents 10 new scenarios, positing what may happen
if certain steps are -- or are not -- taken. In most scenarios,
the gap between rich and poor will widen, vital nonrenewable
resources like oil will become much more difficult and expensive
to obtain, and industrial production in developed countries will
decline.

In 1972 the authors found the world's population and economy
were still comfortably within the planet's carrying capacity.
There was still room to grow safely while we examined
longer-term options. Today this is no longer true. In this new
examination, the authors cite numerous studies confirming that
humanity has dangerously "overshot" our limits, expanding our
demands on the planet's resources beyond what can be sustained
even for the remainder of this century.

Although the past 30 years have shown some progress -- including
new technologies, new institutions, and a new awareness of
individual environmental problems -- the authors are far more
pessimistic than they were in 1972. Humanity has squandered the
opportunity to correct its current course over the last 30
years, they conclude, and much must change if the world is to
mitigate the most harmful consequences of overshoot in this
century.

The message that current growth trends cannot be sustained is
now confirmed every year by thousands of headlines, hundreds of
conferences, and dozens of new scientific studies. But these
focus on specific problems like global warming, soil loss,
extinction of species, and declining tropical forests.

Unfortunately, according to Limits authors Donella Meadows,
Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, all these well-intentioned
efforts are destined to fail -- until they are grounded in
understanding the entire complex system which governs the
world's physical economy, population, materials and energy
flows. Limits to Growth is so far the only book to provide that
understanding.

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