The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality - Essential Guide for Financial Planning & Economic Survival Strategies | Perfect for Investors, Policy Makers & Business Leaders Navigating Economic Shifts

I was fortunate enough to acquire this book after hearing Heinberg speak. Quite simply, this is a paradigm shifting book.If things you hear create a sense of dissonance for you--like seeing a dead in the water economy and a president and congress who keep telling you how things are getting better. Or watching people you know go through bankruptcy while bankers get record bonuses. Or simply that empty feeling you get when you hear politicians and businessmen alike talk about getting America "back to where we were" and you think, "Really?", then this book is for you.Heinberg painstakingly lays out the case for "the end of growth". He acknowledges the policy errors that compounded it but simply points out that we are past the point of peak oil, peak minerals and our environment is maxed out. We have to live with a reality based construct of what we have.Now having read the book you are forever struck by the fundamental error in thinking exhibited by virtually all of the policy creating world (with some exceptions). This book deepened my despair at America's failure of leadership at the recent Environmental conference in Durban.But Heinberg makes an argument for the fact that a less-consumption oriented culture can still be a very happy, more locally based culture.Not unimportantly the book fundamentally helps you see where you want to go next in your own life. It helps you plan for your real future (though I have no desire to paint it as a handbook for the future) in a reality based way.Paradigm shifting is not an entirely comfortable process. It was uncomfortable to read this book though I was already familiar with some but not all of the main ideas. But it is well worth reading.