Towards an Ecologically Sustainable Growth Society

This book is the work of three specialists from the field of Economics (B.F), Business (S.S.) and the Natural Sciences (W.S.). While each chapter concentrates more or less on one or other of these areas, with varying degrees of complexity, it is hoped that the readers whatever their background will fmd something of value in each section, in particular those outside their own disciplines. The authors believe that such cross fertilization of ideas will become increasingly needed in the coming development of a sustainable growth society and it is therefore their hope that this book, as a first example of its kind, will thereby contribute in an interdisciplinary way to the general understanding of the issues of sustainable growth. The authors divided their main contributions to the book as follows: Bruno Fritsch Chapters 1,2,3,4,5 and 8 Stephan Schmidheiny Chapter 7 Walter Seifritz Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 They would like to thank in particular Lloyd Timberlake for his editorial advice and his assistance on chapter 7. Special thanks are due to Irena Kusar for preparing the original figures and diagrams and to the Paul Scherrer Institute for permission to use the illustration, printing and copying facilities during preparation of the manuscript. They would also like to thank Richard Stratton for assembling, typing and correcting the text, editing and final layout and for his helpful advice and contributions to organising the presentation of the material.