Update on Limits to Growth

I am grateful to David Ing and Nicolas Stampf for alerting me to a useful update and overview on ‘The Limits to Growth’.  As David says:

‘what was the message of Limits to Growth? A web video updating the work, in "current language" (e.g. "Human Ecological Footprint" wasn't a phrase they used)'..... has been prepared by the Club of Rome, who developed the original research funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.

A winter school for 61 young researchers has been funded in Germany in November-December to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of Limits to Growth.   Imagine, forty years!!

An open Herrenhausen symposium is also planned to mark this important milestone. Entitled "Already Beyond – 40 Years Limits to Growth“ it will be held on November, 28 and 29, 2012 in Hanover, Germany. Scientists from all over the world are invited to participate. Registration is open until October 31st, 2012.

China - a systemic update

William Pesek had a systemically illuminating article entitled 'Today's Chinese proverb: he who craves wealth joins the party'  in yesterday's business section of The Saturday Age. His, possibly tongue in cheek, conclusion is that 'if the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the poor, China may actually need to go communist'.  It is telling that the Gini coefficient for rural China was 0.3949 late last year, close to the 0.4 threshold that UN analysts suggest is the warning level for social unrest.  He also claims that China 'hasn't devised a strategy to cut pollution' nor made its leaders more accountable. This is a useful update on reflections of my own posted in earlier blogs.