BERLIN - Fifty years ago this spring, one of the most influential books of the 20th century was published. Written for the Club of Rome by Donella Meadows and colleagues at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Limits To Growth used new computer models to forecast an uncontrollable collapse in the global population and economy if prevailing patterns of environmental resource use and pollution continued. Exponential economic growth could not go on forever; at some point in the next 100 years, it would inevitably run up against Earth's finite environmental limits.

A half-century later, with a climate and environmental crisis upon us, the debate triggered by Limits To Growth has returned with a vengeance.