Beyond the limits : confronting global collapse, envisioning a sustainable future / Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-274) and index.

Overshoot -- The driving force: exponential growth. The mathematics of exponential growth. World population growth. World industrial growth. More poverty, more people, more poverty -- The limits: sources and sinks. Renewable resources. Nonrenewable resources. Sinks for pollution and wastes -- The dynamics of growth in a finite world -- Back from beyond the limits: the ozone story. Erosion: the ozone hole -- Technology, markets, and overshoot. Technology and markets in the "real world" -- Transitions to a sustainable system. Deliberate constraints on growth. Constraints on growth plus improved technologies. The sustainable society -- Overshoot but not collapse. The first two revolutions: agriculture and industry. The next revolution: sustainability.

Shows that the world has already overshot some of its limits, and if present trends remain unchanged, we face the virtually certain prospect of a global economic collapse in the next century; envisions the possibility of a sustainable future if these trends are reversed.