Giorgos Kallis presents his book “Limits”

Giorgos Kallis presents his book “Limits”

Date: Tuesday, December 10th 2019

Time: 15h- 16h

Venue: Room Z/023 ICTA-UAB 

Giorgos Kallis will be introducing very briefly his new book Limits. Why Malthus was wrong and Why Environmentalist Should Care, explaining his reasons for writing this book and the core claims defended in it. The activity is organised within the framework of the MdM Unit of Excellence.

Victoria Reyes (ICREA Professor, ICTA-UAB) and Joan Martinez-Alier (Professor Emeritus, ICTA-UAB) will comment, followed by an open discussion with the audience.

Western culture is infatuated with the dream of going beyond, even as it is increasingly haunted by the specter of apocalypse: drought, famine, nuclear winter. This book, published by Stanford University Press reclaims, redefines, and makes an impassioned plea for limits —a notion central to environmentalism— clearing them from their association with Malthusianism and the ideology and politics that go along with it.



Giorgos Kallis rereads reverend-economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his legacy, separating limits and scarcity, two notions that have long been conflated in both environmental and economic thought. Limits shows us how an institutionalized culture of sharing can make possible the collective self-limitation we so urgently need. 



“With this book, I hope to make those who invoke limits consider how best to do so; I also hope to make the critics of limits think twice before branding those of us who call for limits as Malthusians”, explains Giorgos Kallis.