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Vor 40 Jahren erschütterte ein Buch den Fortschrittsglauben der Welt: Der Bericht »Die Grenzen des Wachstums« an den Club of Rome. »Die absoluten Wachstumsgrenzen der Erde werden im Laufe der nächsten hundert Jahre erreicht, wenn es der Menschheit nicht gelingt, ihren ökologischen Fußabdruck zu reduzieren«, lautete seine zentrale These. Sie glich einer Revolution und machte das Buch zu einem Weltbestseller mit über 30 Millionen verkauften Exemplaren. Vierzig Jahre später holt der Club of Rome erneut zu einem großen Wurf aus.»2052« lautet der Name des aktuellen Reports. Er skizziert eine Zukunft, die ganz anders sein wird als wir uns dies heute vorstellen können. Welche Nationen werden ihren Wohlstand halten oder gar vermehren - welche unter der künftigen Entwicklung leiden? Wie wird sich der Übergang zur wirtschaftlichen Vorherrschaft Chinas gestalten? Ist die Demokratie nach westlichem Vorbild geeignet, die großen Menschheitsprobleme zu lösen?Jorgen Randers, einer der Co-Autoren des Meadows-Reports von 1972, hat ein Szenario für die nächsten 40 Jahre erstellt; er stützt sich dabei auf globale Prognosen führender Wissenschaftler, Ökonomen und Zukunftsforscher.Trotz der überwiegend düsteren Prognosen glaubt Randers nicht an einen globalen Kollaps, denn »der Anpassungsprozess der Menschheit an die Grenzen dieses Planeten hat begonnen«. Aber der Report gibt auch keine Entwarnung, denn die Zukunft wartet mit gewaltigen Herausforderungen auf, wird geprägt sein von sozialen Unruhen und zahlreichen Umbrüchen. Sie zu meistern wird unsere Jahrhundertaufgabe sein; »2052« liefert hierzu die (über)lebensnotwendigen Grundlagen. Jorgen Randers ist Autor zahlreicher Bücher und wissenschaftlicher Berichte. Er war Co-Autor des Reports »Die Grenzen des Wachstums« (1972) und mitverantwortlich für die Aktualisierungen der Jahre 1992 und 2004. Von 2004 bis 2009 war er Generaldirektor des World Wildlife Fund; heute ist er Dozent für Klima- und Zukunftsfragen an der renommierten Norwegischen Business School in Oslo. Der Club of Rome ist ein Zusammenschluss von Persönlichkeiten aus Politik, Wissenschaft, Kultur und Wirtschaft. Sein Ziel ist es, sich für eine lebenswerte und nachhaltige Zukunft der Menschheit einzusetzen.

AbstractThe critical challenge in reaching global sustainability is limiting the human ecological footprint, pushing it below the carrying capacity of the planet. This task can only be achieved in two ways: by reducing the population or reducing the footprint per person. Since 1970 there has been rapid progress on the first front; fertility has dropped impressively as a result of more education, maternal health and contraception. There has also been some progress on the second front: technological advances and behavioral changes have been able to keep the footprint per person relatively stable in the rich world, in spite of a doubling of the GDP per person. But more is needed to achieve outright reduction of the footprint of those at high income levels. Sadly, measures to reduce those footprints are normally rejected by voters, because they involve costs, such as higher taxes, in the short term. Among the possible solutions, one stands out as a promising leverage point: reducing the length of the work year (the average number of hours worked for pay per person per year) over the coming decades. If the work year were shortened in an orderly manner, it would ultimately reduce annual production, consumption and the ecological footprint. Importantly, such gradual shortening of the work year could find majority support if it were introduced as a gradual increase in annual leave—for example, by adding two extra vacation days every year for several decades. It is rational to start this effort in the rich world, and system dynamicists have a role to play in getting voters to understand and adopt the leverage point of " more compulsory vacation in the rich world" . Copyright © 2014 System Dynamics Society

This paper compares the forecasts presented in two recent publications, Global Trends 2030 and 2052 - A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. The two differ because Randers believes in slower population and economic growth over the next several decades, significant disruption from increasing climate change, and an end to US supremacy.

"Die globalen Veränderungen werden zu einem Rückgang des Wohlergehens der Menschheit führen, die natürliche wie kulturelle Umwelt Schaden nehmen. Zumindest die Eliten von heute werden dies als den Zusammenbruch ihrer Welt deuten." (Autorenreferat)

Society has so far failed to create a sustainable economic system because all conventional attempts to change the current paradigm lead to a short-term decline in the rate economic growth, resulting in higher inequality and unemployment, outcomes which are politically unacceptable. This article shows how to overcome this hurdle, by adopting 13 unconventional policies which reduce unemployment and inequality while cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, regardless of what happens to economic growth, and so allow for a gradual transition to a sustainable system in short-termist societies.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the idea of a global crisis plan that will be demanded when global society finally decides that the climate challenge is a real threat, requiring immediate and strong policy action at the super‐national level. The authors believe that this demand will arise before 2020, and the authors hope that this paper will encourage others to improve on the plan.Design/methodology/approachThe paper seeks to achieve the purpose by presenting the first draft of such a plan – "The one degree war plan" – in rather concrete terms, and estimating (in quantitative terms) the expected reduction in climate gas emissions that would result from implementing the crisis plan.FindingsThe paper finds that it is surprisingly simple to develop a plan which will reduce global emissions by 50 per cent in five years. It also seems possible to lower global emissions to zero in the ensuing decade, and then run negative emissions of 6 GtCO2e/year for the rest of the century (through carbon capture in various forms). The result, using the C‐ROADS climate model, is to keep the temperature rise in 2100 below +1°C above the pre‐industrial level. Much work needs to assure these conclusions.Practical implicationsThe authors argue that public awareness of the dangers associated with climate change will increase over the next decade, to the level where it is perceived to be a significant threat to global economic and geopolitical stability. The public will then demand emergency action to cut global climate gas emissions. The authors argue that such emergency action ought to be based on a well‐prepared crisis response plan that seeks to keep global warming below +1°C over pre‐industrial levels. The paper presents a draft of the crisis response plan and encourages further efforts to improve the plan.Social implicationsThe social value of having a well‐considered and well‐prepared climate crisis plan in place once the public demand immediate climate action from their politicians, can hardly be overestimated.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, no similar crisis plan has been published.

The vast majority of the decisions made in our global society are responses to problems in which cause and effect are closely related in time and in space. When a problem becomes important, its source is usually obvious, and any appropriate response usually becomes effective in time to eliminate the difficulty. For this class of phenomena it is satisfactory to react after a problem is already apparent. Thus, the institutions involved need only monitor the current status of the system; they need not maintain a long planning horizon. It is important to realize that most environmental problems do not fit into this category. The delays associated with most environmental processes will require us to add an explicit consideration of the time dimension in formulating environmental policy.

The biggest challenges facing human wellbeing today are widening income inequality, continuing global poverty, and environmental degradation. Luckily, these problems are simple to solve — in theory. In practice, however, they are much harder to solve, because we are required to come up with solutions that are acceptable to a political majority in the rich world. Most of the commonly proposed "solutions" are simply not acceptable to most people. Many of these proposed solutions — like stopping the use of fossil fuels — require a sacrifice today in order to obtain an uncertain advantage in the far future. Therefore they are politically infeasible in the modern world, which is marked by relatively short term thinking. In Reinventing Prosperity, Graeme Maxton and Jorgen Randers provide a new approach altogether through thirteen recommendations which are both politically acceptable and which can be implemented in the current period of slow economic growth around the world. Reinventing Prosperity solves the forty year old growth/no-growth standoff, by providing a solution to income inequality, continuing global poverty and climate change, a solution that will provide for economic growth but with a declining ecological footprint. Reinventing Prosperity shows us how to live better on our finite planet — and in ways we can agree on