The 1987 Brundtland Report from the United Nations defined sustainability: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The Brundtland report implicitly imagined that all the world’s countries under the leadership of a pan-national elite would implement policies to support sustainability. The idea that the world was running out of resources became very popular in the 20th century. Some books popularizing this idea were: Road to Survival (1948), Our Plundered Planet (1948), The Population Bomb (1963), Limits to Growth (1972). The Brundtland Report fits in with these previous books. The running out of resources meme was conclusively refuted by Julian Simon in the books The Ultimate Resource and The Ultimate Resource 2  (1981, 1996). Protecting future generations is a faulty concept if carried too far. Predicting anything beyond 100 years...(Read Full Article)