ISBN ?

"In the seven years that Barabara Ward and René Dubos's Only One Earth has been a bestseller, we have become more familiar with environmental crises and global tensions. Three dominate the headlines: affluent lifestyles running ever faster through finite reserves of fuel and other resources; polluting wastes damaging our health and environment, and the strains between rich and poor nations as one third of humanity continues to live in desperate poverty. Some claim such crises are insoluble, others that new technologies hold the answers.

"Progress for a Small Planet accepts neither. It shows how new attitudes backed by new, more conserving technologies can take us beyond these crises. Part One describes these new technologies -- for recycling wastes and resources, for energy, for 'getting more from less' -- and how a more careful use of resources and new approaches to employment can take us beyond increasing alienation at work and a growing dole queue [dole = unemployment benefits]. Part Two is a strategy to meet the most basic needs of the world's poor. Part Three shows how the vast inequalities between rich and poor nations can be reduced to benefit both. In a masterful survey of possible policies Barbara Ward outlines the planetary bargain between the world's nations that would guarantee every human being the right to freedom from poverty and would keep our shared biosphere in good, working order." [jacket blurb, UK hbk, 1979]

"There are two sides to this new and possibly drastic reordering of the economy. One is the concern of the community at large. It is to ensure -- by a guaranteed annual income, by a negative income tax, by increased social security -- that the falling away of wages as machines replace human beings is not matched by a corresponding collapse in the community's purchasing power." --Barbara Ward (page 145, Progress for a Small Planet , UK hbk, 1979).

"Barbara Ward offers practical solutions to world problems. Since the book's publication, these problems continue to grow worse... more unemployed, greater division between the haves and have-nots, mass reduction in the middleclass, reduced research and development, failing infrastructure, etc. The list could go on and on. Isn't it time to consider Barbara Ward's proposals seriously?" --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 9 March 1996).

Highly recommended.