William Ophuls

Before receiving a PhD in political science from Yale University in 1973, William Ophuls spent eight years in the Foreign Service, serving in Côte d’Ivoire and Japan. He published his first major work, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, which suggests that democracy may be incapable of fostering a sustainable society, in 1977. His other books include Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology, Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, and Apologies to the Grandchildren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences.