{"id":61973,"date":"2022-02-22T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61973"},"modified":"2022-02-22T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T00:55:00","slug":"dennis-meadows-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-publication-of-the-limits-to-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61973","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin\u2019s\u00a0On the Origin of Species.\u00a0<\/em>For the twentieth century, it was\u00a0The Limits to Growth.\u00a0<\/em>Not only did this best-selling 1972 publication help spur the environmental movement, but it showed that the underlying dynamics of the modern industrial world are unsustainable on the timescale of a couple of human lifetimes. This was profoundly important information, and it was delivered credibly and clearly, so that every policy maker could understand it. Sadly, the book was rejected by powerful people with vested interests in the Western growth-based economic model that was overtaking the rest of the world. Today we starting to see the results of that rejection.<\/p>\n

Of the book\u2019s four authors, only Dennis Meadows and J\u00f8rgen Randers are active (Donella Meadows died in 2001). I recently reached out to Dr. Meadows, whom I\u2019ve gotten to know during the past few years, to see if he would be willing to engage in a short discussion, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of\u00a0The Limits to Growth.\u00a0<\/em>He graciously agreed.<\/p>\n

Richard Heinberg: Dennis, it is an honor to have this opportunity to interview you. Congratulations on having co-authored the most important book of the past century. I\u2019m delighted that you\u2019re willing to reply to a few questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

First, how is reality tracking with the scenarios you and your colleagues generated 50 years ago?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dennis L. Meadows: There have been several attempts, recently, to compare some of our scenarios with the way the global system has evolved over the past 50 years. That\u2019s difficult. It\u2019s, in a way, trying to confirm by looking through a microscope whether or not the data that you gathered through a telescope are accurate…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin\u2019s\u00a0On the Origin of Species.\u00a0For the twentieth century, it was\u00a0The Limits to Growth.\u00a0Not only did this best-selling 1972 publication help spur the environmental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[32675,485,1081],"class_list":["post-61973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-dennis-meadows-resilience-org","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61974,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61973\/revisions\/61974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}