The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

by Donella H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows

Book Overview

"A pioneering work of science."--Business Insider

"[This book] helped launch modern environmental computer modeling and began our current globally focused environmental debate . . . . a scientifically rigorous and credible warning."--The Nation

In 1972, three scientists from MIT created a computer model that analyzed global resource consumption and production. Their results shocked the world and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193149858X
• ISBN13: 9781931498586
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

New Way of Thinking

This book has given me a completely new way from which to approach problems. It provides an extremely interesting way from which to view systems, growth, and economics. The theories are based on logical relationships and statistics. This book gives a real definition to what Sustainable Growth means. I would recommend anyone interested in economics or the environment read this book, it will change the way you think.

Overshoot and collapse?

It's been 30 years since the publication of the original LIMITS TO GROWTH, and according to the updated computer model (World3), overshoot and collapse is still the most likely outcome of current trends -- too many humans, consuming too much and polluting too much, are already in a condition of overshoot (by about 20%), and will most likely go charging on until crashing back to Earth, with population and consumption reduced back beneath the carrying capacity of the environment. Using World3 and a mountain of data, the authors show that improved technologies and efficient markets, while necessary, will not be sufficient to prevent overshoot and collapse -- it will also be necessary to radically restructure society to reduce our reckless squandering of the Earth's resources. The book is full of data and analysis, and while not technically challenging, is not easy reading. But LIMITS is required reading for every human on the planet! It is certainly depressing, especially knowing that the message was not heeded in the Seventies, and it is still not being heeded in the Aughts. But despair is no more constructive than complacency -- those of us who have woken up to the crisis have got to act -- CARPE DIEM! One of the authors, Donella Meadows, died before this third edition was completed. Dana was a tireless and infectious optimist, who never stopped spreading the word that we have to change our way of life if humanity and the other forms of life we share the planet with are to survive. Read this book, share it with others, and do SOMETHING to promote the needed transition to an ecologically sustainable country and world. Do it for Dana, do it for your children, do it before it's too late. See my THE CLEAN/RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION list for more books and my reviews. I particularly recommend THE UPSIDE OF DOWN: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by the political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Important Distinctions Between "Growth" and "Progress"

In the Authors' Preface, they provide important background information to their "30-Year Update": Published in 1972, "The Limits to Growth (LTG) reported that global ecological constraints (related to resource use and emissions) would have significant influence on global developments in the twenty-first century. LTG warned that humanity might have to divert much capital and manpower to battle these constraints -- possibly so much that the average quality of life would decline sometime during the twenty-first century." Then in 1992, the authors conducted a 20-year update of their original study and published the results in Beyond the Limits. "In BTL we studied global developments between 1970 and 1990 and used the information to update the LTG and the World3 computer model. BTL repeated the same message: In 1`992 we concluded that two decades of history mainly supported the conclusions we had advanced 20 years earlier." However, BTL (10992) offered one new finding: "...humanity had already overshot the limits of Earth's support capacity. This fact was so important that we chose to reflect it in the title of the book." If you have not already read one or both of the two earlier volumes, these brief excerpts from the Authors' Preface to Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update will suggest a context within which to understand and appreciate the significance of what Meadows, Randers, and Meadows share in this third volume. If I understand their key point, it is this: Humanity's consumption of Earth's resources (i.e. humanity's "ecological footprint") proceeds at an increasingly faster rate than Earth's available resources can accommodate (i.e. its "carrying capacity"). There must be prudent physical growth constraints on consumption in combination with replenishment of the Earth's resources. Otherwise, over time, "the world will experience overshoot and collapse in global resource use and emissions." The authors clearly identify the global challenge (page xv), explain their reasons for writing this update (pages xviii and xix) in response to that challenge, and then conclude their Preface with the prediction that "it will take another decade before the consequences of [global ecological] overshoot are clearly observable and two decades before the fact of overshoot is generally acknowledged." They intend to provide another update in 2012, on the 40th anniversary of their first book. In the 14 chapters which follow, Meadows, Randers, and Meadows explain why it is not only desirable but indeed imperative to 1. increase the consumption levels of the world's poor 2. reduce humanity's total ecological footprint 3. support technological advances (e.g. to achieve #1) 4. support personal change (e.g. to achieve #2) 5. think in terms of longer planning horizons The authors offer a range of alternative scenarios (i.e. ten different "pictures" of how the 21st century may evolve) to encourage their reader's learning, reflection and personal choice. For

Humanity Needs to Wake Up: We Are Devastating the Planet

This is a thorough, scientific account of what mankind is doing ecologically to the planet. There are many charts, graphs and research studies proving that the planet is in danger. Mankind has already gone past the level of sustainability. It's not a matter of IF, but a matter of WHEN the planet will not be able to sustain humanity at the current population level and standard of living.This book explains about the earth's resources and how we are overusing them. Also about the byproducts of our use of these resources and the pollution it causes. Many examples are given of how people can change their ways of production and resource use.It is disturbing to think what humans are doing to the planet and what the future will be if we don't change our ways. This book gives the big picture of what is happening ecologically to the planet and what needs to be done NOW to stop the devastation.