As ever, the core ideas of systems thinking (set out in Chapter 4) will be a useful tool. GDP growth, like all growth, arises out of a reinforcing feedback loop, and it will eventually come up against a limit—a balancing feedback—that will most probably emerge from the larger system in which the economy is embedded. Based on the evidence available to date, it looks as if that limit lies in the carrying capacity of the living world. Must this encounter lead to collapse, or could we pre-empt that future by transforming the economy from ever-growing on an unstable trajectory to ever-oscillating
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