Beyond the Limits
Subtitle: Confronting global collapse - envisioning a sustainable future
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Post Mills, Vermont
Number of pages: 300
Subjects: Population; Population Growth; Demographics
Genres: Non-Fiction; Science; World Affairs
First sentence: "Twenty years ago we wrote a book called The Limits to Growth.  It described the prospects for growth in the human population and the global economy during the coming century" (from the preface)  --  From chapter four:  "Any population-economy-environment system that has feedback delays and slow physical responses, that has thresholds and erosive mechanisms, is literally unmanageable.  No matter how brilliant its technologies, no matter how efficient its economy, no matter how wise is decision makers, it simply can't steer itself away from hazards unless it tests its limits very, very slowly..."
Description: This is a book about rapid population growth and its environmental and societal impacts; about exponential mathematics and delayed feedbacks, and about the dangers of overshoot and collapse that confront humanity and civilization today.  Sample sentences:  "this book is about overshoot..."  --  "human society has overshot its limits, for the same reasons that other overshoots occur.  Changes are too fast.  Signals are late, incomplete, distorted, ignored, or denied.  Momentum is great.  Responses are slow..."  --   "we also believe that if a correction is not made, a collapse of some sort is not only possible but certain, and that it could occur within the lifetimes of many who are alive today...
Table of contents: title: Overshoot; title: The Driving Force - Exponential Growth