Green Growth, Smart Growth

“This is a much-needed book. It doesn’t gloss over the crisis but rather shows ways out of it, beyond the gloom, doom and ‘business as usual.’ It’s about a great awakening, a new industrial revolution, and at the same time about a new relationship to nature.” —Prof. Ernst Ulrich v. Weizsäcker, Co-President of the Club of Rome

“What does a sustainable future look like in the transition from the geological era to the age of man, the Holocene to Anthropocene? We must thank Fücks for not retreating to a position of resignation with this book. He lays out how even in a world of 9 billion people prosperity and peaceful coexistence are still possible.” —Prof. Klaus Töpfer, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

“We have been bombarded with the choice between the good and the bad. Why? We should all strive to do better without forcing anyone to choose between black and white, as Ralf Fücks demonstrates in his book ‘Green Growth, Smart Growth’.” —Gunter Pauli, author and founder of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative

This book is not another warning about the end of the world. It is neither a penitential sermon on environmentalism, nor an appeal to frugality and self-restraint. Far from having exhausted the era of technological, social and democratic progress, we are on the brink of a new stage of industrial modernity: a shift from a fossil-based to a postfossil economy, from the ruthless exploitation of nature toward growth in tandem with it. Decoupling economic growth from environmental consumption is an ambitious goal, but also an achievable one.

Drawing on the German policy experience of tackling climate change, ‘Green Growth, Smart Growth’ outlines a positive way forward in this great transformation and it does so in the conviction that the danger industrial civilization poses to our future can be overcome using the means of modernity: science, technology and democracy. It is by no means certain that we will win the race against climate change and dwindling resources. That will require nothing less than a great leap forward—a green industrial revolution.

Readership: Appropriate for students, policymakers and the intelligent non-specialist reader interested in issues of sustainable growth, innovation, political economy and the proactive approach to confronting global climate change.

Table of contents

Foreword by Anthony Giddens; Preface and Acknowledgments; Introduction: The Decline of Modernity or the Beginning of a New Chapter?; 1. A Changing World; 2. The Limits to Growth – The Growth of Limits; 3. The Malaise of Modernity; 4. The Green Industrial Revolution; 5. Bioeconomics; 6. The Future of Agriculture; 7. An Energy Revolution; 8. The Postfossil City; 9. Ecocapitalism; 10. The Politics of Environmental Transformation; Notes; Bibliography; About the Author; Index