Beyond the Limits to Growth

Since the Club of Rome famously warned, half a century ago in The Limits to Growth, that humankind’s unfettered consumption of finite resources is an invitation to catastrophe, there has been a remarkable commitment of thought and ingenuity, across many disciplines, to gainsay that prophecy.

And indeed, there have been impressive successes, as is evident in even the most cursory examination of human development in the last five decades. Not least is the rescue of hundreds of millions of Chinese from the mire of poverty, and the global democratisation of knowledge, ingenuity, and transformative approaches enabled by the digital age, a direct product of the third industrial revolution.