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Abstract

Since 1967, the population of the world has expanded by 2 billion people; in 55 wars and civil wars, 9.6 million people lost their lives. During the same period, the gross world product has doubled, the world-wide level of debt has increased more than tenfold. The global consumption of energy has increased by a factor of 2.5. In the past 25 years, we have had two oil crises, about three dozen coups d’état, and at least three serious nuclear reactor accidents (Windscale 1958, Three-Mile-Island, 1979, and Chernobyl, 1986). In 1967, the United Nations had 122 member states; since then, their number has increased by 56, giving a total of 179 in 1992.

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Fritsch, B., Schmidheiny, S., Seifritz, W. (1994). Historical Developments. In: Towards an Ecologically Sustainable Growth Society. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78742-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78742-3_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-78744-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-78742-3

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