Your explanation of discounting the future in response to Steve's question was the best explanation I've come across. We are just as near-term oriented as the unwashed masses. They acknowledge the criticism of their original book based on that kind of interpretation, but they state that it was a misinterpretation then too. They use a computer model to look at various ways a model economy responds with different combinations of such things as technology, response times to stress signals, and different allocations of resources. Up to where I'm at right now in the book, a main point is that technology and the market economy, even when operating ideally, can't prevent an overrun and collapse result.
Different combinations affect when and how the collapse comes, but the final result is a collapse.
Looking ahead, I think they're going to say that what's necessary is technology and the market economy applied by society using principles and ethics different from what's happening now. A big part of that needs to be switching from a preoccupation with growth to concentrating on qualitative development. When first leafing through the book and seeing references to computer modeling, I right away became skeptical. We all know how good models are at predicting exact results in complicated situations with uncertain and missing data. I thought those graphs meant they were predicting specific events for specific years.