Abstract
Bankrupting Nature: Denying our Planetary Boundaries by Andres Wijkman and Johan Rockström emerges from the original report of The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth authored by Meadows and colleagues in 1972. This book shows that an economy built on the continuous expansion of material consumption is not sustainable. Based on the increased evidence of the uncanny correlation between the escalating rates of global economic growth and environmental degradation, this book continues to raise worldwide awareness of environmental problems created as the result of anthropogenic activities. Bankrupting Nature demonstrates that we are still in deep denial about the magnitude of the global environmental challenges and resource constraints facing the world. The authors state that the challenges of sustainability cannot be met by simply tinkering with the current economic system, but will require major changes in the way members of political and corporate elites and general public perceive and address environmental and social issues. As reported in the recent press release of The Club of Rome (2012), this volume lays out a blue-print for a radically changed economic system that links economics with ecology, arguing that this is the only way to generate growth in the future.