Reinventing Prosperity

The biggest challenges facing human wellbeing today are widening income inequality, continuing global poverty, and environmental degradation. Luckily, these problems are simple to solve — in theory. In practice, however, they are much harder to solve, because we are required to come up with solutions that are acceptable to a political majority in the rich world. Most of the commonly proposed “solutions” are simply not acceptable to most people. Many of these proposed solutions — like stopping the use of fossil fuels — require a sacrifice today in order to obtain an uncertain advantage in the far future. Therefore they are politically infeasible in the modern world, which is marked by relatively short term thinking. In Reinventing Prosperity, Graeme Maxton and Jorgen Randers provide a new approach altogether through thirteen recommendations which are both politically acceptable and which can be implemented in the current period of slow economic growth around the world. Reinventing Prosperity solves the forty year old growth/no-growth standoff, by providing a solution to income inequality, continuing global poverty and climate change, a solution that will provide for economic growth but with a declining ecological footprint. Reinventing Prosperity shows us how to live better on our finite planet — and in ways we can agree on.