Limits and Beyond:

50 years on from The Limits to Growth what did we learn and what’s next?

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In 1972, a book changed the world.

The Club of Rome commissioned a report that changed how we see what humans are doing to the planet. Looking back five decades later: what happened next, what did we do and not do, what did we learn, and what happens now?

In The Limits to Growth, a team from MIT studied the way humans were using the resources of the earth. Using sophisticated computer modelling, the researchers developed scenarios to map out possible paths for humanity, the global economy and the impact on the planet.

Were their models right?

What did the rest of the world do about it?

Now, in 2022, the Club of Rome has brought two of the original authors from the 1972 book, Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers, along with an array of other world-renowned thinkers, scientists, analysts and economists from across the globe to answer these questions and grapple with the most acute issue of our time.

In the first section, “Echoes of a Great Book”, Ugo Bardi sets the scene with an in-depth examination of the original report and the effect it has had on how we might think about what humanity is doing to the world.

Two of the original authors of the 1972 report, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows, then ask what the first book actually said and answer the most common questions that people ask about the book and progress since. Further explorations of the impact and consequences of the ground-breaking original book follow.

Next, in the “Still the Economy, But What Kind?” section, the contributors examine the economic ideas that have informed and arisen from The Limits to Growth in the following decades and critique those assumptions and notions. They ask what must change if we are to stay within the limits set by nature.

In the “New Lenses for a Different Future” section, thinkers from continents and cultures across the globe expand on their unique experiences of acting in and observing a world that may use all its resources before we wake up and act.

The “Did We Learn? Will We?” section ponders where we go from here. Has humanity taken in the lessons of The Limits to Growth? What have we learned in the meantime? And, most importantly, what can we do about it now?

Limits and Beyond: 50 years on from The Limits to Growth, what did we learn and what’s next? reaches back half a century to when the original report shook the world into realising that we live in a finite world, brings it sharply up to date, and looks clear-eyed into the future.

Limits and Beyond is the book that will shape the conversation about our place on the earth for the next 50 years and beyond.

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Foreword

Introduction

Echoes of a Great Book

Ugo Bardi – The story of an idea

Jorgen Randers – What did The Limits to Growth really say?

Dennis Meadows – Questions about The Limits to Growth

Sviastolav Zabelin – Crisis as a transition. What was, what will be.

Ernst von Weizsäcker – 50 years after The Limits to Growth

Gianfranco Bologna – From limits to growth to planetary boundaries

Still the Economy, But What Kind?

Wouter van Dieren – How the Club of Rome became a world agenda

Hunter Lovins – Growth of what?

Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien – Moving beyond The Limits to Growth: Solidarity capitalism

Julia Kim – Bhutan and beyond: The emergence of wellbeing economies

New Lenses for a Different Future

Sirkka Heinonen – The Limits to Growth paves the way from futures shock to futures resilience

Yury Sayamov – The historic Limits to Growth report: 1972 and the present world

Sandrine Dixson-Declève – Today’s human predicament: The convergence of tipping points

Mamphela Ramphele – Changes 50 years after Limits to Growth

Petra Künkel – The Limits To Growth rebooted: From patriarchal ignorance to collective stewardship of vital futures – A feminist perspective

Chandran Nair – The Limits to Growth in the Asian century

Yi-Heng Cheng – Prosperity in resilience

Did We Learn? Will We?

Gaya Herrington – I did a data check on World3. Here’s what I found.

Chuck Pezheski – How do we grow socially?

Nora Bateson – What is relevance in a changing world?

Carlos Alvarez Pereira – Learning what we already know