“This is a fresh new way of looking at our core problems on the planet—a different lens to try to understand why we’re having such problems and how we might find better paths.”

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“Rob Hengeveld provides a broad history of humanity’s impacts on Earth’s life support systems, leading to today’s pivotal and dangerous moment.  Wasted World is a sobering read that provides us with an understanding of how this urgent situation came to be.  It is possible to pull Earth back from the brink—if we act on Hengeveld’s message.”

Gretchen Daily, Stanford University

“Ecologist Rob Hengeveld’s Wasted World is a monumental cri de Coeur. . . . In Wasted World, Hengeveld’s intellectual compass is firmly aligned with the powerful decades-old environmental rhetoric of thinkers such as environmentalist Donella Meadows (co-author of The Limits to Growth; Universe Books, 1972) and population biologist Paul Ehrlich. Hengeveld argues that we are depleting resources and polluting the environment faster than human survival can bear — literally ‘wasting’ the planet.To his credit, Hengeveld squanders no space on using resources more efficiently in support of economic growth. He homes in on how the human population already exceeds Earth’s capacity.”

Nature

“The historical coverage is . . . impressive in helping to expose how centuries of human development have landed us here, with society on the brink of collapse.  Given the book’s title, one would be forgiven for thinking that this work is just about waste: it is, but it is more besides. Rob Hengeveld successfully reveals how population size, resource exploitation and the threat of system collapse are all interrelated issues that humanity must face up to if it is to avert collapse and have a future on planet Earth.”

Times Higher Education