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Witness History

The book that warned 2020 would bring disaster

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 and warned of global decline from 2020. Claire Bowes spoke to one of the authors of the book, Professor Dennis Meadows, in 2019. He described how they used computer modelling to analyse how the Earth would cope with unrestricted economic growth. In the early 1970s he and his team 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. This programme was first broadcast in January 2020 but in this edition we catch up with Professor Meadows for a final thought on the significance of the global pandemic during 2020.

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

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

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.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.

0:29.2

Hello and thanks for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bose.

0:39.0

In 1972 as the world began to wake up to environmental damage, a best-selling book called The Limits

0:46.1

to Growth was published. The authors used computer modeling to try to project possible scenarios

0:52.0

for the world's future.

0:54.0

Although climate change was mentioned just once

0:56.8

and there was no mention of a global pandemic,

0:59.6

it did warn that civilization would begin to decline by 2020.

1:05.0

I spoke to one of the authors Professor Dennis Meadows in December 2019.

1:11.0

Operation Bargin Hunter, the annual assault... 2019.

1:13.0

Operation bargain hunters, the annual assault on Markdown merchandise was planned, prepared, ready.

1:18.0

Inside the defenders announced sensational reductions.

1:21.0

Before the Christmas holiday was really over.

1:24.0

In the 1960s all over the Western world, economies were growing and people were shopping.

1:30.0

The old battle cry went up in thousands of strong points. Stocks must be cleared. Why they must is a trade secret, but they must and they will.

...

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