This is a guest post by Luís Queirós. Luís is a member of ASPO Portugal. Prior to his retirement, Luís led Marktest, a market and opinion research firm he created in 1980.

Two years ago, when I started visiting The Oil Drum, the main subject of posting and discussion was peak oil: why?, when?, how?. Now, peak oil seems to be in the past, and is less an object of discussion. Other factors are becoming more important, including "growth" and "sustainability". We take care to avoid the word "collapse".

The purpose of this post is to introduce a recently published report which is a notable contribution to the subject of growth and sustainability.

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100...

… In short, this report challenges the assumption of continued economic expansion in rich countries and asks: is it possible to achieve prosperity without growth?