1. Overshoot
2. The driving force: exponential growth
3. The limits: sources and sinks
4. World3: the dynamics of growth in a finite world
5. Back from beyond the limits: the ozone story
6. Technology, markets, and overshoot
7. Transitions to a sustainable system
8. Tools for the transition to sustainability
A woman whose pioneering work in the 1970s still makes front-page
news, Donella Meadows was a scientist, author, teacher, and farmer
widely considered ahead of her time. She was one of the world's
foremost systems analysts and lead author of the influential Limits
to Growth--the 1972 book on global trends in population, economics,
and the environment that was translated into 28 languages and
became an international bestseller. That book launched a worldwide
debate on the earth's capacity to withstand constant human
development and expansion. Twenty years later, she and co-authors
Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers reported on their follow-up study
in Beyond the Limits and a final revision of their research, Limits
to Growth: The 30-Year Update, was published in 2004.
Jorgen Randers is professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian
Business School, where he works on climate issues and scenario
analysis. He was previously president of BI and deputy director
general of WWF International (World Wildlife Fund) in Switzerland.
He lectures internationally on sustainable development and
especially climate, and is a nonexecutive member of a number of
corporate boards. He sits on the sustainability councils of British
Telecom in the UK and the Dow Chemical Company in the United
States. In 2006 he chaired the cabinet-appointed Commission on Low
Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which reported on how Norway can cut its
climate gas emissions by two-thirds by 2050. Randers has written
numerous books and scientific papers, and was coauthor of The
Limits to Growth in 1972, Beyond the Limits in 1992, Limits to
Growth: The 30-Year Update in 2004, and 2052: A Global Forecast for
the Next Forty Years in 2011. Randers lives in Oslo,
Norway.
Dennis Meadows is emeritus professor of systems policy and social
science research at the University of New Hampshire, where he was
also director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science
Research. In 2009 he received the Japan Prize for his contributions
to world peace and sustainable development. He has authored ten
books and numerous educational games, which have been translated
into more than 15 languages for use around the world. He earned his
Ph.D. in Management from MIT, where he previously served on the
faculty, and has received four honorary doctorates for his
contributions to environmental education.
John N. Cooper, for AxisofLogic.com-
This is a wonderful book. Originally published in 1972 as Limits to
Growth and refreshed in 1992 in Beyond the Limits, the authors have
now issued a 30-year appraisal [Chelsea Green Publishing, ISBN
1-931498-58-X], in which they examine the progress made both in
their understanding of the mechanisms underlying the impact of
humanity on the world ecology and of steps taken toward remediating
the accelerating approach to trainwreck that is mankind's
ill-managed and uncontrolled 'footprint' on this planet's
environment. Briefly, humanity has overshot the limits of what is
physically and biologically sustainable. That overshoot WILL lead
to the collapse of the planetary environment's ability to support
not only our species but much of the rest of the biosphere if we do
not act rapidly and effectively to reduce our footprint. These
conclusions provide reasons for both optimism and alarm: optimism
because humanity has demonstrated its capacity to act appropriately
in one specific instance; and alarm because thirty years have been
largely wasted since the consequences of our failing to act were
detailed. There is still time but the need to act quickly and
effectively is urgent. The authors demonstrate that the most
critical areas needing immediate attention are: population;
wasteful, inefficient growth; and pollution. They show how
attention to all three simultaneously can result in returning the
human footprint on the environment to manageable, sustainable size,
while sharply reducing the disparity between human well-being and
fostering a generous quality-of-life worldwide. Absent this, the
prospects are grim indeed. The book is divided into three sections,
the first outlining in principle the authors' systems analytical
approach to understanding the planet's ecology. Their presentation
is clear and comprehensible with an abundance of charts and figures
that make visualizing the concepts easy. They successfully avoid
the pitfalls of many technical presentations by using familiar
analogies and largely avoiding professional jargon. As a result
readers come away with insights not just into global
interconnectedness of inputs, outputs, accumulation and feedback
but also the significance of such dynamics in local, even personal,
situations. The second section deals with the authors' updated and
revised modeling program, World3, which they utilize to test the
plausible effects of changes in human political, economic and
social behavior on the environment. Their discussion of World3
focuses on the assumptions for, and results of, a variety
calculational scenarios. Details of their latest programming
revisions are reserved for an index. Repeatedly they emphasize that
their results are NOT prescriptive, but merely descriptive in
general terms of likely consequences of humanity's failure or
success in rising to meet the issues cited. Again excellent
graphics for the various scenarios allow the reader to see at a
glance what different approaches toward rectifying past, present
and future environmental damage may have. The final chapters
describe options open to humanity that the authors believe have the
best chance of avoiding social, economic and probably political
collapse in the next century or so. We have a choice: the human
experiment, possibly even the biological experiment, that is life
on this planet can yet succeed and persist in a sustainable way.
But to do so will require our species as whole consciously and
deliberately to take immediate, remediating steps, now, seriously
and adequately to address the issues we have so far failed to do so
effectively. It IS up to us. © Copyright 2005 by
AxisofLogic.com.
*John N. Cooper*
"In 1972, The Limits to Growth was published as a clarion call to
begin changing the way the world worked so we safely made it to
2050-2070. The authors were clear that the path of change needed to
begin "now" so we made a course correction within the next 30
years. Sadly, the message they wrote got badly misunderstood and by
30 years later, scores of critiques to the book claimed the authors
warned that the world would run out of oil and other scare
resources by 1990 or 2000. It is time for the world to re-read
Limits to Growth! The message of 1972 is far more real and relevant
in 2004 and we wasted a valuable 30 years of action plans by
misreading the message of the first book."--Matthew R. Simmons,
energy analyst and founder, Simmons & Company International, The
world's largest energy investment banking practice
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