Limits to Growth - 30-Year Update (Meadows, et al) See also, Thinking in Systems - A Primer, Donella Meadows (late).
The Club of Rome initially reported their path-breaking world modelling work in the short treatise, The Limits to Growth, 1972. It was received as an "I suspected as much" by environmentally intelligent scientists, citizens, and environmentalists, and branded and dismissed as doom saying by business and mainstream society. In 1972, the model predicted reaching the earth's carrying capacity limits given the current efficiencies, tools, and processes of the economy a couple to a few hundred years out. The re-run of the model in the early 1990s reported in the book Beyond the Limits by Donnella Meadows et. al., confirmed many of the initial predictions, but shortened the time frame to 50-100 years. The recent work of the IPCC and the accelerating dynamics of climate change shorten the timeframe even further, to 10-20 years before we hurl past the point of no return for system destabilization and likely collapse. The upside of this exercise is that the models also illuminate the path to reverse course and to chart a new course towards systems management for sustainability, which also promises a higher magnitude of wealth production and economic security than our current unsustainable socioeconomic trajectory. Will we be smart enough and capable enough to read the writing on the wall and reverse course is the million dollar question of the first third of the 21st century. After that, all bets will either be on or off.