The Industrial Age has ended, according to "no-growth futurism," because the finitude of the earth has been reached. Its proponents maintain that technological innovation cannot save industrial society because of pollution, over population, and inflation. They call for a transformed society in which productivity, pollution, and population growth are strictly controlled.

This volume emphatically challenges the no-growth viewpoint on both philosophical and empirical grounds. In it, Edward Walter demonstrates that the interests of those who are socially deprived cannot be fulfilled in a "steady-state" because the privileged classes are able to use their power to prevent redistribution of wealth and to retain their advantages.

Far from equating technology with pollution and the depletion of natural resources, Walter sees it as the means by which resource shortages can be overcome and pollution control can be achieved. He describes and recommends an "essential liberalism," that could provide economic development to all classes in a spirit of international cooperation—without necessitating the transformation of human nature and political institutions.