Press Realease:
London-based independent international publisher Anthem Press presents the English edition of:
"Green Growth, Smart Growth. A New Approach to Economics, Innovation and the Environment" - by Ralf Fücks with a foreword by Anthony Giddens, ISBN 9781783084739 - Hardback.
Written by green thinker and economist Ralf Fücks, Green Growth delivers positive economic and environmental arguments for a paradigm shift to ‘smart growth' using efficient technology, smart energy policy and proactive innovation. In a landmark year for international sustainable development that includes the 2015 United Nations summit to create a global agenda, Green Growth, Smart Growth’s themes are especially relevant to our changing world.
This work is not another warning about the end of the world. It is neither a penitential sermon on environmentalism, nor an appeal to frugality and self-restraint. Far from having exhausted the era of technological, social and democratic progress, we are on the brink of a new stage of industrial modernity: a shift from a fossil-based to a postfossil economy, from the ruthless exploitation of nature toward growth in tandem with it. Decoupling economic growth from environmental consumption is an ambitious goal, but also an achievable one.
Drawing on the German policy experience of tackling climate change, ‘Green Growth, Smart Growth’ outlines a positive way forward in this great transformation and it does so in the conviction that the danger industrial civilization poses to our future can be overcome using the means of modernity: science, technology and democracy. It is by no means certain that we will win the race against climate change and dwindling resources. That will require nothing less than a great leap forward—a green industrial revolution.
An information sheet on the book can be found here. Please let us know if you wish to receive a review copy, an extract of the book or any additional information. High resolution photos of book jacket and author are available to download, and you can read a Q&A with Ralf Fücks on the websites for Heinrich Boell and Anthem Press. The author shall be speaking about the book at numerous events around the world this year and is generally available for interviews.
About the author
Ralf Fücks has written widely on environmental policy and political economy, and is currently President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an influential public policy organization advancing green visions and projects.
Advance Praise for Green Growth, Smart Growth
“This is a much-needed book. It doesn’t gloss over the crisis but rather shows ways out of it, beyond the gloom, doom and ‘business as usual.’ It’s about a great awakening, a new industrial revolution, and at the same time about a new relationship to nature.”
- Prof. Ernst Ulrich v. Weizsäcker, Co-President of the Club of Rome
“What does a sustainable future look like in the transition from the geological era to the age of man, the Holocene to Anthropocene? We must thank Fücks for not retreating to a position of resignation with this book. He lays out how even in a world of 9 billion people prosperity and peaceful coexistence are still possible.”
- Prof. Klaus Töpfer, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme
“We have been bombarded with the choice between the good and the bad. Why? We should all strive to do better without forcing anyone to choose between black and white, as Ralf Fücks demonstrates in his book ‘Green Growth, Smart Growth’.”
- Gunter Pauli, author and founder of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative