Limits

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Limits

Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care

Social and political philosophy Conservation of the environment

Author: Giorgos Kallis

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Language: English

Published by: Stanford Briefs

Published on: 6th August 2019

Format: LCP-protected ePub

Size: 372 Kb

ISBN: 9781503611566


Critical Study

"artfully explores the power of limits ... A compelling—and fittingly concise—read for our times" (Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics).

Introduction

Western culture is infatuated with the dream of endless economic growth, even as it is haunted by the specters of drought, famine, and nuclear winter. How did we come to think of the planet and its limits as we do? This book reclaims, redefines, and makes an impassioned plea for limits—a notion central to environmentalism—clearing them from their association with Malthusianism and the ideology and politics that go along with it.

About the Book

In Limits, Giorgos Kallis offers a critical reassessment of economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his legacy. He separates the concepts of limits and scarcity, which have long been conflated in both environmental and economic thought. Limits are not a property of nature to be deciphered by scientists, but a choice that confronts us, one that, paradoxically, is part and parcel of the pursuit of freedom.

Historical Perspective

Taking us from ancient Greece to Malthus, from hunter-gatherers to the Romantics, from anarchist feminists to 1970s radical environmentalists, Limits shows us how an institutionalized culture of sharing can make possible the collective self-limitation we so urgently need.

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