Jorgen Randers is an optimist. When I met him in Washington DC in March at a Limits to Growth symposium hosted by the Smithsonian and the Club of Rome, I found him to be a delightful, cheerful man. Yet he has given up on humankind. The biggest take-away from his new book, the latest decadal Limits to Growth update, is that short-term thinking will continue to trump the long-term welfare of the planet, and of the future generations who will depend on it.
But 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years is far from a depressing doomsday read. In fact, based on my own worldview, informed by a decade of researching and monitoring our modern culture’s obsession with growth, Randers paints a far rosier picture of our future than I’m afraid we’ll see.