Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology. A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave - for we have already overshot the Earth's capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that "the principals of ecology apply to all living things." These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.

Sociological Theory and the Environment is a comprehensive survey and assessment of sociological theories of the relations between societies and their "natural" biophysical environment. This book touches on and addresses virtually all of the major perspectives, focal points, and debates in environmental sociology today--classical and twentieth century social theories, macro-micro linkage issues, globalization and development, reflexive modernization, ecological modernization vs. "limits" viewpoints, modernity and post modernity, risk society, constructionalism-realism, environmental movements/identities, consumption and environment, cultural sociologies of the environment, and so on. At the same time, the book aims to go beyond an inventory of environmental sociological theory. Sociological Theory and the Environment stresses how new ground can be broken in the articulation of environmental sociology with major classical and contemporary sociological theories.