Beyond the Limits to Growth : New Ideas for Sustainability from Japan

Abstract

In 1972 the non-governmental organization Club of Rome published the landmark Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) a scenario-based analysis of 12 possible world futures to the year 2100. Its key messages were that the human ecological footprint cannot continue to grow for more than 100 years from 1972 at the rapid rate seen from 1900 to 1972; it is possible or even likely that this footprint will overshoot Earth’s sustainable limits; once sustainable limits are overshot, contraction is unavoidable, but overshoot can be avoided through appropriate global policy. At this moment in 2013 it would appear that our world has in fact followed the business as usual scenario of Limits to Growth , and that we have long since entered the trajectory of overshoot. Therefore, by the reasoning of Limits to Growth , a con- traction of our collective ecological footprint is inevitable, either in the form of a planned contraction or a collapse.