What’s the Future Like?

My mother told me the other day: it looks as if the world is coming to an end.

She had just read about the new report issued by the Club of Rome which indeed does sound rather scary. But the makers of Limits to Growth are not the only ones who believe that the world is going down if we don’t act.

The Tellus Institute is asking similar questions.  The Boston based research institute is driven by the idea of a different world. According to the project called Great Transition Initiative there are three main perspective for the future of our planet,

The Sword of Damocles

Why Rio+20 will not solve the environmental challenges the international community is facing and why the Green Economy is not the solution.

“We are currently living in a civilization that, as far as we can determine future risk, looks unsustainable” (Giddens 2010, p. 10). A look at the news confirms this: islands are disappearing, monsoon patterns are changing and deserts are growing. Pandora’s box has been opened. Solutions to this energy-environment conundrum exist. But hydropower-dams, biofuels and nuclear energy bring, according to my view, more harm than good. What we need are political solutions which accept and act upon the following:

Growing Growing Growing

We grow, the buildings around us grow and so do the piles of books and other things we own. The thing is, growth has its limits.

Inspired by a series of articles in which TAZ discusses the limits to growth, I will be looking at what happend to the idea in 40 years.