This major synoptic work explores some of the most important questions facing humanity in the coming generations. It is remarkable for its author's holistic treatment of the environment and social justice as inescapably related questions; his refusal to analyze the industrialized and developing countries as though they are so different that any understanding of the one can ignore the other; and his integrity in exploring difficult and controversial questions from a stance that always addresses the evidence, even if that leads to conclusions that are not currently fashionable.

Saral Sarkar argues that the USSR bumped up against environmentally defined and resource-related limits to growth at a relatively early stage. But this does not mean that a free market, globalized capitalist economy will indefinitely escape a similar fate. Nor will a modified 'eco-capitalism', as promoted by some sections of the Western environmental movement, provide a sufficiently grounded solution to the twin problems of environmental destruction and social injustice.

The author looks, therefore, to a fundamentally different future - one in which our very notion of progress is differently conceived.