The book that predicted an end to civilisation

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 and predicted global decline from 2020. It was based on a computer model which analysed how the Earth would cope with unrestricted economic growth. Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology fed in huge amounts of data on population, pollution, industrialisation, food production and resources. They found that if the trends continued, the result would be a sudden and uncontrollable downturn beginning around 2020. Claire Bowes hears from one of the authors of the book, Professor Dennis Meadows.

Image: Front cover of The Limits to Growth, published in 1972

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
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0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this
0:30.3	BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know.
0:34.4	My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds.
0:38.3	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely
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0:54.2	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories.
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1:10.0	Hello and thanks for downloading Witness History from the BBC World Service with me
1:14.8	Claire Bose. Should the world's economies keep on growing indefinitely and if so what
1:21.1	price are we prepared to pay for this system?
1:24.0	In 1972, as the world began to wake up to environmental damage,
1:29.0	a best-selling book called The Limits to Growth was published.
1:32.0	The book's authors used computer
1:34.4	modeling to try to predict the Earth's future. They were the first to coin the term
	...

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