Dennis Meadows: "Limits to Growth turns 50 - Checking In"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2022
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, we meet with Professor Emeritus of Systems Management and author, Dennis Meadows.
Meadows revisits Limits to Growth 50 years after it was published. Looking back, how does Meadows view the book? How much of the response to his description of overshoot was based in fear?
Meadows offers advice to current leaders based on the models he developed in Limits to Growth. Why is it important to develop success indicators, and how can they be clearly communicated to the public?
Further, Meadows explores the available leverage points to avoid the worst types of collapse at our current stage of crises.
About Dennis Meadows:
Dennis Meadows is the Emeritus Professor of Systems Management at MIT and the co-author of Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits.
He has received numerous awards and is the recipient of four honorary doctorates for his contributions to environmental education. He co-authored the pioneering 1972 book The Limits to Growth, which analyzed the long-term consequences of unconstrained resource consumption driven by population and economic growth on a finite planet.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/12-dennis-meadows
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.0 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.0 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the |
| 0:22.6 | bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about |
| 0:28.6 | it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:32.6 | For many of you, Dennis Meadows needs no introduction. He was a professor of systems management |
| 0:40.0 | at MIT and the former director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research |
| 0:45.3 | at the University of New Hampshire. Most famously, or infamously, 50 years ago this month, |
| 0:53.8 | Dennis led the team which developed the Limits to Growth |
| 0:56.5 | research and book. They used the World Three model to simulate the consequence of interactions |
| 1:04.0 | between Earth and human systems, which spawned both awareness and criticism on its forecast |
| 1:10.4 | for the coming century. |
| 1:12.8 | The Limits to Growth Study influenced many researchers and activists, including me, to better |
| 1:18.8 | imagine how all the various inputs to our economy and environment fit together. |
| 1:24.9 | Dennis is a no-nonsense fellow. |
| 1:27.1 | This conversation was hard-hitting with no fluff. |
| 1:31.2 | I hope you enjoy it and learn from it. For context, it was recorded just a few days before |
| 1:37.2 | Russia invaded Ukraine. Hello, Dennis. |
| 1:52.8 | Good day, Nate. |
| 1:54.6 | I had spent 12 years since I saw you at some energy conference in Europe, if I recall. |
| 2:00.1 | Well, probably that was in Vienna, where I suppose you and I were both at one of the, |
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