Thirty years ago, the fourth king of Bhutan famously proclaimed that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product,” setting the country on a development path that seeks to integrate sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development with environmental...

She double-checks the name of the essay final exam — Global Environmental History 302 — complete with her student ID number and the date, 23 May 2052. Deciding to use voice and gesture interface for input and edit, she is ready. She thinks OK, Jiera, just keep it organized. You studied for...

The discipline of positive psychology studies what free people choose when they are not oppressed. I call these desiderata the elements of “wellbeing,” and when an individual or nation has them in abundance, I say it is “flourishing.”…

The earth is finite and so are the chemical elements of which it is composed. Those elements, represented by the symbols that fill the boxes of the periodic table, fuel all human consumption. Yet we are mining and redistributing these fundamental elements at such a rapid rate that many are...

From New Zealand's position now in the year 2050, in a state of strong sustainability, it is clear that its citizens were quite unready in 2009 to embrace the concept of sustainable living and the changes required to achieve it. Modern historians have marveled at the fact that the 2008 general...

Since the Industrial Revolution, two main motivations have driven the movement for work-time reduction. Free time away from the job improves individual well-being, while reducing work hours can cut unemployment by better distributing the available work. These historical motivations for work-time...

It is the year 2100, the atmospheric CO2 level is subsiding back toward 350 parts per million (ppm), and the best is yet to come. Beset with a host of global problems just a century ago, our generation rose to the challenge. Here is our story…

The global economy rests on a knife's edge. The financial crash of 2008 caused US$50 trillion and 80 million jobs to evaporate.1 And the wreck is not over. This chapter describes the major challenges facing the economy and proposes solutions.

For the coming generation, the critical challenge is an interior one — a shift inside us that could trigger a tectonic shift outside…

This is an edited transcript of part of a talk given by Donella Meadows at the 1994 meeting of the International Society for Ecological Economics in San José, Costa Rica, and recorded by Peter Griesinger. Meadows, cofounder of the Balaton Group, passed away in 2001, but she has inspired a...