Escape from Overshoot , livre ebook

Praise for Escape from Overshoot
Uses sound economics to map a path out of overshoot. Highly recommended.
-Herman Daly
An excellent primer on key insights and questions in ecological economics from a celebrated pioneer of the field.
-Jason Hickel, author, Less is More
Peter Victor provides a state-of-the-art overview of the drawings for the economic rocket humanity needs for a safe landing on Spaceship Earth. In our turbulent times, with multiple planetary boundaries breached and tipping points approaching fast, Escape from Overshoot provides the perfect launch pad for new economic thinking that reconnects the world with planet Earth.
-Johan Rockstr m, Professor, Earth System Science; Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; and co-author, Earth for All
The title of Peter Victor s important book says it all: the planet is in peril and a major factor is a global economy too big for nature to flourish. Human beings are animals and thus, like all other species, constrained by nature and nature s laws. An economy unfettered by the needs and limits of nature and propelled by a fool s goal of endless growth has created the twin ecological crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. All who care about the kind of world we are leaving to our grandchildren and what we can do to bring the economy into harmony with nature must read this vital book.
-David Suzuki, emeritus professor and grandfather
What a tour de force . I simply love this book. Peter Victor makes it clear that economic activity has overshot, putting the future of human society in peril. But, beyond evidence and analysis, Victor offers ideas about what governments, society, and organizations can do. This is a must-read for anyone concerned about our collective future.
-Pratima (Tima) Bansal, Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability, Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario
The biggest challenge facing humanity today is building a future that is both sustainable and desirable to most people and the rest of nature. Peter Victor s Escape from Overshoot plots a detailed yet feasible course to that future, based on a post-growth, ecological economic vision and new systems-dynamics modelling. Victor shows how escaping our addiction to the current economic paradigm (and the overshoot and collapse that portends) can result in the better, fairer, more prosperous world we all want. A must-read for the rapidly growing movement we need to make that happen.
-Robert Costanza, Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London
Dr. Peter Victor skilfully shows us that indeed we are in overshoot and time is not on our side. There is no doubt that we could have avoided overshoot if we had listened both to the warnings in Limits to Growth and many subsequent publications by prominent scientists and ecological economists over the last 50 years. If we are to finally find an exit route from our own human folly - our addiction to growth - we need Peter Victor s book and many others to draw a vision of the future that is both hopeful andreal. Victor draws a plausible pathway that nicely intertwines with a growing body of evidence and proposals for new economic models from across the globe. This book is timely and gives cause for hope!
-Sandrine Dixson-Decl ve, co-president, the Club of Rome, and co-author, Earth for All
Peter Victor has consistently been a leading general in the Paul Revere Brigade, presciently warning us for decades of the interconnected ecological and economic crises now unfolding before our eyes. He has also been an always courageous, clear thinkerand rigorous analyst illuminating sensible rather than fanciful pathways out of our predicament. Stop what you are doing and read this important book!
-John B. Fullerton, founder and president, Capital Institute
Overdue, but not too late. I can t think of anyone who shouldn t read Escape from Overshoot . Victor provides essential insights into the economic thinking that led to social and environmental disaster and draws critically important policy implications from the new models that will facilitate our escape.
-Richard B. Norgaard, Professor Emeritus of Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley
Global civilization is in ecological overshoot, depleting and polluting the biophysical basis of its own existence. Untreated, overshoot is a fatal condition. Erudite and lavishly illustrated, Peter Victor s Escape from Overshoot is a sweeping analysis of the flawed economic mindset that has pushed us to the brink and an inspired prescription for the new economics needed to help pull us back.
-William Rees, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), and co-author, Our Ecological Footprint
In this ambitious, deeply humanistic, and very accessible volume, Peter Victor explains the origins of the current global predicament of ecological overshoot, and points to a path toward diminishing it. In the process, he takes a reader on a grand tour of ecological and earth systems science, economics, history, demography, energy and technology studies, and contemporary debates about post-growth wellbeing economics. It is a must-read for all who like complexity made comprehensible, and who reach beyond headlines, doomsday predictions, and simplistic solutions. This is a terrific book! I wish I had it when I was teaching and it should be a required text for all university students, regardless of specialization.
-Halina Szejnwald Brown, Professor Emerita of Environmental Science and Policy Clark University, and co-founder, Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI)
Whether you re a reformer or a revolutionary, this compelling and provocative work is a critical resource as we grapple with the climate crisis, planetary health, and reversing biodiversity loss. The book explores alternatives and sustainable paths moving forward in plain terms and I highly recommend it to anyone in the sustainability field.
-Paul Bubelis, Executive Director, Sustainability Network
An intriguing book for troubled times. Peter Victor brilliantly weaves together the history of economic thought, economic and social development, and the path to the current ecological overshoot. He brings realism to proposed solutions by exposing myths, for example with regard to green GDP, and then highlights a plausible way forward. If you want to understand the past, the present, and potential economic and ecological futures, this book is for you.
-Brynhildur Davidsdottir, Professor of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Iceland
The scale of our economy is driving overshoot and resulting in overlapping ecological crises. Peter Victor provides a clearly written introduction to the links between economic growth and ecological impact, and offers tools and policy pathways for avoiding disaster. Escape from Overshoot is a must-read for the next generation of economists.
-Brett Dolter, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Regina
If human history is our guide, then overshoot is our destiny. Yet Peter Victor s comprehensive review of the evidence, debates, and alternatives also provides a credible escape plan from planetary disaster. I wish our leaders had this balanced sensibility between reality and imagination.
-Jon D. Erickson, professor, University of Vermont, and author, The Progress Illusion
I own hundreds of books, all carefully curated. But I reserve one short shelf for books that I think everybody needs to read right away in order to grasp the human condition and what needs to be done. Peter Victor s Escape from Overshoot is now at the front of that shelf. It is clearly and entertainingly written and elicits an aha! on every page. Escape from Overshoot would be a great book on those merits alone, even if it weren t the key to our collective fate.
-Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, and author, Power
An engaging and learned discussion that brings to a wide audience the fruits of several decades of research and public policy experience of Dr. Victor. The book describes and explains succinctly humanity s predicament and develops an escape strategy from overshoot towards a more attractive future than what we are facing if current trends continue.
-Aitf Kubursi, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Economics, McMaster University
Escape from Overshoot is a timely reminder that humankind s predicament is not just about how we do individual things, but also about the scale at which we do everything. Victor offers a nuanced approach to thinking about and designing plausible escape paths from overshoot that everyone should be cognizant of and seriously consider. A very important and accessible book.
-Professor Philip Lawn, Torrens University, Adelaide
Peter Victor is a world expert on the clash between the economy and the environment. His fifty-year career in university and public administration reached the top with his ecological macroeconomics, developed in the last decades in the pursuit of a paradigm of post-growth. In Escape from Overshoot, he writes with authority on the main themes considered in this guidebook for the future: social metabolism and energy, macroeconomics, demography, consumption, food, technology, wage-work, robots, and advertising. This is a unique book illustrated with many graphics and drawings like a (deadly serious) comic. It is not a long treatise, it is a short, well-informed book with crucial proposals written in easy-to-read language.
-Joan Mart nez Alier, emeritus professor, ICTA-Universitat Aut noma de Barcelona
An absolute must read - I could not put it down and read it in one sitting. Peter Victor masterfully ties the threads of economic thought together to demonstrate why - and how - we can collectively do our best to avoid climate and ecological breakdown.
-David Miller, managing director,