But I am not sure that I feel fine.  Why not?  Well, read on and find out.

When people talk about what books they are reading, I listen.  If I hear more than one person mention a book, I figure that it’s something I need to read.  When I hear more than one person that I admire mention a book, I read the book within the next month.  The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality  by Richard Heinberg (Amazon affiliate link) is one of the latter.  Will Rapp, who started Gardener’s Supply and about a thousand other businesses in Vermont, and Will Patten, who used to be the Executive Director at VBSR both referenced this book within a day of each other a couple of weeks ago, so I picked it up and read it as soon as I had the chance.

I am glad that I did.

The book is worth reading, particularly if you are interested in sustainable business, or are worried about the current state of affairs with our global economy.  The central assertion of the book is that “economic growth, as we know it, is over and done with.”  Sobering thought.  Heinberg outlines a very clear argument for the reasons that he sees that our economy has reached a point where it can no longer reasonably be expected to grow.  I am not going to list the arguments here, as I believe what he asserts is significant enough that it’s worth your time to learn directly from him by reading the book, but I will say that I came away feeling strongly that he is on the money.   The primary things that he discusses are the fallacy of substitution and innovation (the concept that, if we eliminate a resource innovation will lead to a new resource that can be substituted), the reasons our economy is so closely tied to the use of fossil fuels, the challenges we face in trying to find new sources of energy (or the amount of energy that we need to expend extracting and creating the new source of energy), the inherent problems of a credit and debt based economy, and the widening gap between the richest and poorest people in the world.

I disagreed with a few things that he asserts, and was turned off by a few passages where he extrapolates from a single case study to make an important point (I found this to undermine his credibility, often needlessly) but I found myself nodding much more often than I was grimacing.

Heinberg masterfully applies environmental/ecological economic systems thinking to discuss the financial crisis of 2008, the underlying causes of our current challenges, whether or not the system is truly broken, and what we can actually do about it.  The book feels fresh, the insights are relevant (particularly for Occupy Wall Street supporters), and there are even suggested solutions about how we could wisely handle contraction of the economy so that it doesn’t end up being catastrophic.  (Full disclosure:  I am hopeful that this intelligent and insightful management of the change could happen, but do not expect it to.)

If you are interested in an alternative to Gross Domestic Product as a measure of national health, are ticked off about the state of affairs in our government, believe that infusions of cash into a broken system are pointless, know who Herman Daly is, work in a business that considers itself sustainable, or want to learn more about how dire our current global economic situation is, then I strongly suggest you pick this book up and read it.  This month.  I do not, however, guarantee that you will feel fine after reading it.