The Limits to Growth

Limits To Growth summarized the first major computer simulation of world society. It was comprehensive, including the influence of: human population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion. The results were sobering! It showed that, if major limits were not established for human population, pollution, and resource depletion, a severe collapse of human society would follow in the near future. What most people do not know is, the report was so disturbing it was accepted by the United Nations for action. It was so well received by world leaders that, by 1974, almost every world nation agreed to take major… show more.

This is the definitive classic that launched the modern debate on ecological limits. Meadows and her colleagues at MIT ran a global computer model, "World3", for the Club of Rome and produced the first detailed simulations of population, industrial output, food, resources, and pollution. Either we slow down economic and population growth, they argued, or they will come down crashing on their own, and it won’t be pretty. Debates about the specifics of the model and the accuracy of its prophecies still rage. And the book was relatively thin on how to smoothly slow down, what this would entail, and… show more.

Written fifty years ago, this book articulated the ecological crisis in which we remain but few understand. The authors vividly show that human numbers, consumption, and economy cannot grow forever. The researchers tracked industrialisation, population, food, energy, material resources, and pollution through 1970, projected out to 2100, and predicted that the early stages of global collapse (depleted soils, global heating, biodiversity collapse, pandemics) would appear about now, early in the 21st century. Our current crises, many studies, and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, confirm their projections: They nailed it.

If you are interested, in 2003 they published Limits… show more.