The Story Behind Limits to Growth

Full ep notes at wickedproblems.earthI have a confession to make. Even with a self-image as a world-weary cynic, I’m as vulnerable to manipulation as anyone else, especially for stories I grew up with.The Limits to Growth came out the year I was born. I grew up in the US in the 80s. So we heard a lot of things like this:So even though I’m late to it, I was delighted to have come across the work of Katy Shields, who presents (and co-produced with Vegard Beyer) a beautifully executed 3-episode audio documentary series about Limits to Growth, which makes its principal author Danella Meadows the main character.Hearing Katy’s telling of the story of this extraordinary woman who tried to warn us against the future we now inhabit, often in her own words - thanks to an unpublished book outline by Danella to which Katy got exclusive access - made me a bit embarrassed to have previously accepted the bracketing of Limits to Growth in the same category of far more problematic stuff like Malthus, Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb or (the MAGA-right fave) Jean Raspail’s dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints. Many such works seem not so troubled by population growth per se as much as the hue of the babies being produced.While I’m not completely convinced by the arguments Meadows made and Katy Shields/Vegard Beyer excavated and made fresh, Katy does have an excellent series of essays where she takes forward the thinking of Meadows et al as a way to investigate how economics was hijacked by the opponents of Limits to Growth.In this Conversation00:00 Introduction: Questioning Growth00:32 Meet the Guest: Katy Shields02:21 Discovering 'Limits to Growth'04:38 The Impact of Systems Dynamics07:30 Critiques and Misunderstandings09:37 Danella Meadows' Influence11:23 Uncovering Unpublished Diaries14:43 Life on Foundation Farm18:51 Economic Theories and Climate Inaction19:12 The Abundance vs. Scarcity Debate20:08 Historical Influence on Modern Economics21:41 The Chicago School's Dominance23:26 Challenges in Modern Economic Education28:54 Donella Meadows' Legacy31:15 Visioning a Sustainable Future34:34 Future Directions and Final ThoughtsAt the top of the episode we clip a 1994 speech by Danella Meadows that is an extraordinary few minutes that seem to foreshadow the ‘abundance discourse’ currently all the rage on the centre-left.Which is not actually to shame those who, I believe in good faith, believe that ‘perpetual growth’ is the only potential solution to the challenges of the mid-21st century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.