New Book: 2052 A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years by Jorgen Randers

2052
A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

by Jorgen Randers


Book Data
ISBN: 9781603584210
Book Art: B&W images
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Number of Pages: 304
Book Publisher: Chelsea Green
Release Date: May 30, 2012


"Read 2052 and get the views of a great futurist—one with a fine track record of being right."
—Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Dominant Animal

A Report to the Club of Rome Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of The Limits to Growth

Forty years ago, The Limits to Growth study addressed the grand question of how humans would adapt to the physical limitations of planet Earth. It predicted that during the first half of the 21st century the ongoing growth in the human ecological footprint would stop—either through catastrophic "overshoot and collapse"—or through well-managed "peak and decline."

So, where are we now? And what does our future look like? In the book 2052, Jorgen Randers, one of the co-authors of Limits to Growth, issues a progress report and makes a forecast for the next forty years. To do this, he asked dozens of experts to weigh in with their best predictions on how our economies, energy supplies, natural resources, climate, food, fisheries, militaries, political divisions, cities, psyches, and more will take shape in the coming decades. He then synthesized those scenarios into a global forecast of life as we will most likely know it in the years ahead.

The good news: we will see impressive advances in resource efficiency, and an increasing focus on human well-being rather than on per capita income growth. But this change might not come as we expect. Future growth in population and GDP, for instance, will be constrained in surprising ways—by rapid fertility decline as result of increased urbanization, productivity decline as a result of social unrest, and continuing poverty among the poorest 2 billion world citizens. Runaway global warming, too, is likely.

So, how do we prepare for the years ahead? With heart, fact, and wisdom, Randers guides us along a realistic path into the future and discusses what readers can do to ensure a better life for themselves and their children during the increasing turmoil of the next forty years.

For more info: http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/2052:paperback#