| Limits to Growth |
Remember the book that made a huge splash in 1972? Well, the 30-year update has been released. Of course, we are in trouble and their computer systems analysis has been right on schedule. But they insist their model is not a predicting tool but to present a range of alternative scenarios of how the 21st century may evolve. “Sadly, we believe the world will experience overshoot and collapse in global resource use and emissions much the same way as the dot.com bubble [their word for overshoot] -- though on a much longer time scale. The growth phase will be welcome and celebrated, even long after it has moved into unsustainable territory (this we know, because it has already happened).
The collapse will arrive very suddenly, much to everyone’s surprise. And once it has lasted for some years, it will become increasingly obvious that the situation before the collapse was totally unsustainable. After more years of decline, few will believe that there once more will be abundant energy and sufficient wild fish. Hopefully they will be proven wrong.” (p.xxii)
When the book first came out in ‘72, millions of copies were sold. Readers changed their livelihoods. It was a revolutionary time. Not much has changed since then; actually things have gotten worse. They published this book 30 years later, since they need to get the public discourse engaged again. With the Bush cabal, it’s on the back burner burning the pot: “Since the late 1980s the earth’s peoples have been using more of the planet’s resource production each year than could be regenerated in that year. In other words, the ecological footprint of global society has overshot the earth’s capacity to provide.” In one chart, human demands overshoot “nature’s supply by some 20% in 1999.” The most positive chapter is called “Tools for the Transition to Sustainability,” a slightly updated version from when Dana Meadows wrote it in 1992 (she died in March 2001 and the book is dedicated to her).
It concludes that no one has the answers, but the major change just beginning is equivalent to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. “Like the previous revolutions, it will take centuries to unfold fully -- though it is already underway....no one knows how to bring about such a revolution ... this one can’t be planned or dictated.... The sustainability revolution will be organic. It will arise from the visions, insights, experiments, and actions of billions of people.” She writes about how important media and information is, information that is relevant, compelling, select, powerful, timely and accurate. That’s a big project for sure, especially with corporatized media so dominant in our world. It reminds me of what Mr. Hoffman wrote in his book “Hoax.” “Taken as a whole the mass media seldom rises to the level of deplorable trash, but it is also true that there is no mass audience in America for anything better, and anyone who offers a higher quality will go broke trying.” But he continues: we are responsible for the information, since so much of it is out there. “In the end the hoax is a self-hoax.”
Dana goes on to list and explain the five tools that can aid in this transition: Vision, Networking, Truth-telling, Learning and Loving. Remember this was written back in 1992, and is slightly updated, but the authors don’t say if Dana wrote the update or not. Most exposes end with just a few minutes of solutions, or perhaps a vision like Jeremy Rifkin did at the end of the incredibly important film “The Corporation.” “Super Size Me” had its moments; “Fahrenheit 9/11” and its similar “Bowling for Columbine” were weak in their solutions. Neither had anything about non-violent communication skills, nothing about independent media, nothing about learning how to become a conscientious objector.
Perhaps they are right and I’m wrong, but I sense we need to say the problem in about five minutes and then show people how they can empower themselves with all these fascinating solutions which are embedded in the vision. But then again, solutions will go in one ear and out the other if people don’t know there is a problem. So perhaps you have to do 50% of each rather than the usual 95% of the bad news and 5% of what can be done about it.
