Gaya Herrington: from working in finance to studying paths to global sustainability

While working at the consulting firm KPMG, the econometrician Gaya Herrington undertook an update of the social and environmental projections in the 1972 MIT report "Limits to Growth." Her research formed her thesis for her Masters in Sustainability at Harvard, and then gained attention in the press after being published in 2020. In this episode, Gaya describes her path to studying sustainability and the solutions proposed in her free book, "Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse: What a 50-Year-Old Model of the World Taught Me About a Way Forward for Us Today." The abstract of her earlier paper, "Update to limits to growth," includes the statement: "The two scenarios aligning most closely with observed data indicate a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity’s goal in the twenty-first century." Hosts: Marie Fadeyeva, Columbia '24, Gabriel Gitter-Dentz, Bowdoin '25 Producer/Editor: Eli Gitter-Dentz, Hunter HS '24 Send us Fan Mail