Prof. Dennis Meadows "Its Too Late for Sustainable Development" [Smithsonian 2012]

Meadows' formal remarks will have three goals: explain the essential and still unique contribution of our 1972 report to the Club of Rome, describe how my own understanding about the interaction of limits with physical growth on the planet has changed over the past 40 years, and justify my proposal that humanity's focus should now be more on resilience than on sustainability. It is far too late to achieve sustainable development, as that term is commonly understood. A precipitous decline in resource and energy use is coming in the next decades, and the most important goal now is to adopt policies that will reduce its negative impacts on the values that are most important to us. Dennis Meadows was appointed to the MIT faculty in 1969. In 1970 he assembled a team of 16 scientists to conduct a two-year, computer-model based study on the long-term causes and consequences of physical growth on the planet Earth. That project was funded by the Club of Rome and lead to 3 reports, one of which, The Limits to Growth, was presented for the first time to the public in the Smithsonian Institution Castle in March 1972. The book was eventually translated into about 35 languages, and it was selected as one of the most influential environmental books of the 20th century. He worked subsequently with Jørgen Randers and with Donella Meadows, senior author of Limits to Growth, to produce a second edition in 1994 and a third edition in 2004. Before becoming Professor Emeritus of Policy Systems in 2004, Dennis Meadows was a professor for 35 years at MIT, Dartmouth College, and the University of New Hampshire earning tenure in schools of engineering, management, and the social sciences. He has received numerous honorary doctorates in the US and Europe for his contributions to environmental education. His many awards include the 2009 Japan Prize. He has co-authored 10 books and designed numerous computer-based strategic planning games that are used in many nations to teach principles of sustainable resource use. He remains very active, especially in Europe and Japan, speaking, writing, and advising corporate and government leaders on issues related to growth.