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2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

Article · July 2015

DOI: 10.4018/ijudh.2013010114

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Saptarshi Purkayastha
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
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88 International Journal of User-Driven Healthcare, 3(1), 88-89, January-March 2013

Book Review
2052:
A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years
Reviewed by Saptarshi Purkayastha, Norwegian University of Science & Technology,
Trondheim, Norway

2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty
Years
Jørgen Randers
416 pp.
$24.95
© 2012 by Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN 978-1-60358-467-8
When I first read the prequel to this book, Limits
to growth – the 30yr update, I was sure that I
wanted to read how things have become 10yrs
later and 40yrs since the “Club of Rome” as they
are called, came out with their path-breaking
view of the world’s problematic growth outlook.
That’s what Randers tries to do in the latest
release, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next
Forty Years.
The theme is similar to ideas from previous
books, where they have looked at the problems
with single-minded economic growth. Greed,
overshoot, delay in perception or response,
whatever you may call it, the author has high-
lighted that there are limits to growth and how
we can’t sustain this single-minded approach to
achieve growth. What is brilliantly highlighted
in the book - that growth in the way in which it
has happened since 1930s has created enormous
disparity. A fourteen-fold increase in world
industrial output since 1930s has created more
disparity and hasn’t ended poverty. Another
fourteen-fold increase (if possible with earthly
limits) would not change it either. Running
the system harder or faster will not change the
pattern as long as the structure is not revised.
Randers acknowledges that the forecast
in his latest book has large uncertainties. He
focuses on energy needs to run the growth-
engine and suggests that energy needs might
be met by carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS), wind and solar energy. Randers suggests

DOI: 10.4018/ijudh.2013010114

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