INFLUENTIAL FUTURIST AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR, TO SPEAK ABOUT HIS BOOK, 2052: A GLOBAL FORECAST

NYS Writers Institute, February 6, 2013
7:30 p.m. Reading | Lecture Center 7, Academic Podium,
Uptown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
Jorgen Randers, influential futurist, environmental scientist, and coauthor of the global bestseller, The Limits to Growth (1972), will speak about his new book on humanity’s future, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012), on Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. in Lecture Center 7, Academic Podium, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. The event is free and open to the public, and is cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Business, Office of Environmental Sustainability, Rockefeller College, and the College of Computing and Information as well as the System Dynamics Society and the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
Influential futurist, environmental scientist, and a founding figure in the fields of “sustainability studies,” Jorgen Randers is the author of the new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012), a fresh perspective on humanity’s immediate future— or possible futures— with particular emphasis on the impact of global warming, pollution, water scarcity, food shortages, and the collapse of the fossil fuel economy. The book was written as a 40-year update to the global bestseller, The Limits to Growth, coauthored by Randers in 1972, and as a special report to the global brain trust, The Club of Rome, of which Randers is a member.

“With clarity, conscience, and courage, global-systems pioneer Jorgen Randers and his distinguished contributors map the forces that will shape the next four decades. Their sobering but far from despairing insights will encourage all who strive in applied hope to build a society worthy of nature’s legacy and humans’ potential,” said Amory Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, one of the world’s leading sustainability think tanks. UN Special Envoy on Climate Change Gro Harlem Brundtland called the book, “thoughtful and thought provoking… inspiring and challenging, for all who really care about our common future.”

Jorgen Randers coauthored the enormously influential and pessimistic 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, a global bestseller that predicted that world population growth would ultimately lead to the collapse of the earth’s resources, despite advancing technologies. The book aroused widespread debate in policy circles and scientific journals, and has continued to influence policy discussions over the course of the last forty years.

Randers’ original coauthors included environmental scientist Donella H. Meadows, systems management expert Dennis L. Meadows, and William W. Behrens III. The work was republished in substantially updated editions in 1992 and 2004. The predictive models used in the book have been validated in recent years by a number of papers published in major journals.

Writing about Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update (2004), environmentalist and bestselling author Bill McKibben said, “Thirty years has proved this model prophetic; now, in its newest iteration, we get one last challenge. May we pay more careful attention than in the past!” Jim Motavelli, editor of E/The Environmental Magazine said, “With even the Pentagon warning that global warming could pose more of a threat than terrorism, it’s time we paid serious attention to the sustainable prescriptions outlined in Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global Update.”

Professor of Climate Strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, Jorgen Randers formerly served as Deputy Director-General of the World Wildlife Fund.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.