Beyond the limits

the long version

This is a book about human population growth, carrying capacities, delayed feedbacks, our environmental impacts, and the possibilities of overshoot and collapse. -- Excerpt: "Any population-economy-environment system that has feedback delays and slow physical responses, that has thresholds and erosive mechanisms, is literally unmanageable. No matter how brilliant its technologies, no matter how efficient its economy, no matter how wise its decision makers, it simply can't steer itself away from hazards unless it tests its limits very, very slowly."