VOLUME 16 NUMBER 9 THE SYSTEMS ® NOVEMBER THINKER 2005 BUILDING SHARED UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL ISSUE: MOVING TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE PLEASE FORWARD THIS ISSUE TO YOUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES. With the tragic impact of the recent natural disasters and the growing evidence of global warm- ing, climate change has come to the forefront as a major concern and challenge for the world’s citizenry.While the realization of the scope of the problem is new to many, system dynamicists have been documenting the troubling trends for more than 30 years. In 1972, a group at MIT created a computer model that projected the alarming consequences of continued unchecked growth.The resulting book, The Limits to Growth (Universe Books, 1972), shocked the world and became an international best seller. Authors Donella Meadows (deceased), Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers recently published a third edition, Limits to Growth:The 30-Year Update (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004). In up- dating the model and book, they found that the trends documented three decades ago were largely unchanged and that humankind continues on a path toward environmental and social collapse. But rather than offering a series of grim prospects for the future, the authors conclude the book with an optimistic call to action and a surprising set of “tools” for making the transition to a more sustainable way of living on the planet. Thanks to the generosity of Chelsea Green Publishing(www.chelseagreen.com), in this issue of The Systems Thinker, we are publishing Chapter 8 of The Limits to Growth:The 30-Year Update in its entirety (p. 2).We’ve also included recent comments by Dennis Meadows about the role of collaboration in finding and implementing solutions to big problems (p. 10). Because any large-scale change effort requires a critical mass of engaged and interested people working together, we would like to encourage you to forward this special issue to your colleagues, friends, members of community groups and religious organizations—anyone you can think of who might respond to the call to action.True change begins when each of us decides to do something differently. Copyright © 2005 Pegasus Communications, Inc. (www.pegasuscom.com) All rights reserved. For permission to distribute copies of this newsletter in any form, please contact us at [email protected]. FEATURE TOOLS FOR THE TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABILITY BY DONELLA MEADOWS, JØRGEN RANDERS, AND DENNIS MEADOWS Chapter 8 of Limits to Growth:The 30-Year Update (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004) Reprinted by permission. We must be careful not to succumb to Everywhere we find folks who things to do:Work out your own fru- despair, for there is still the odd glimmer of care about the earth, about other peo- gally elegant lifestyle, have at most hope. —Edouard Saouma, 1993 ple, and about the welfare of their two children, argue for higher prices children and grandchildren.They rec- on fossil energy (to encourage energy ognize the human misery and the efficiency and stimulate development Can we move nations and people in the direction of sustainability? Such a move environmental degradation around of renewable energy), work with love would be a modification of society compa- them, and they question whether poli- and partnership to help one family lift rable in scale to only two other changes: cies that promote more growth along itself out of poverty, find your own the Agricultural Revolution of the late the same old lines can make things “right livelihood,” care well for one Neolithic and the Industrial Revolution of better. Many of them have a feeling, piece of land, do whatever you can to the past two centuries.Those revolutions often hard for them to articulate, that oppose systems that oppress people or were gradual, spontaneous, and largely unconscious.This one will have to be a fully the world is headed in the wrong abuse the earth, run for election conscious operation, guided by the best direction and that preventing disaster yourself. foresight that science can provide....If we will require some big changes.They All these actions will help.And, actually do it, the undertaking will be are willing to work for those changes, of course, they are not enough. Sus- absolutely unique in humanity’s stay on the if only they could believe their efforts tainability and sufficiency and equity Earth. —William D. Ruckelshaus, 1989 would make a positive difference. require structural change; they require They ask: What can I do? What can gov- a revolution, not in the political sense, ernments do? What can corporations do? like the French Revolution, but in What can schools, religions, media do? the much more profound sense of the e have been writing about, talk- W What can citizens, producers, consumers, agricultural or industrial revolutions. ing about, and working toward parents do? Recycling is important, but by itself it sustainability for over three decades Experiments guided by those will not bring about a revolution. now.We have had the privilege of questions are more important than What will? In search of an knowing thousands of colleagues in any specific answers, though answers answer, we have found it helpful to every part of the world who work in abound.There are “50 simple things try to understand the first two great their own ways, with their own tal- you can do to save the planet.” Buy revolutions in human culture, insofar ents, in their own societies toward a an energy-efficient car, for one. Recy- as historians can reconstruct them. sustainable society.When we act at cle your bottles and cans, vote knowl- the official, institutional level and edgeably in elections—if you are The First Two Revolutions: when we listen to political leaders, we among those people in the world Agriculture and Industry often feel frustrated.When we work blessed with cars, bottles, cans, or About 10,000 years ago the human with individuals, we usually feel elections.There are also not-so-simple population, after millennia of evolu- encouraged. tion, had reached the huge (for the time) number of about 10 million. World3 Model These people lived as nomadic The World3 model is a computer simulation of interactions among population, indus- hunter-gatherers, but in some regions trial growth, food production, and limits in the ecosystems of the Earth. It was created their numbers had begun to over- in 1970-1972 by a project team within the System Dynamics Group at MIT’s Sloan whelm the once abundant plants and School of Management to analyze the long-term causes and consequences of growth in game.To adapt to the problem of dis- the world’s population and material economy.The study was commissioned by the Club appearing wild resources they did two of Rome. Dennis Meadows, then on the faculty at MIT, assembled and directed the 16- person project tream. Based on the scenarios that emerged from the model, Donella things. Some of them intensified their Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers wrote the bestselling and highly influ- migratory lifestyle.They moved out ential book Limits to Growth (Universe Books, 1972). of their ancestral homes in Africa and the Middle East and populated other 2 THE SYSTEMS THINKER® VOL. 16, NO. 9 www.pegasuscom.com © 2005 PEGASUS COMMUNICATIONS areas of the game-rich world. trolled combustion.These problems They must demand the right to pro- Others started domesticating ani- were solved relatively quickly, result- duce, buy, and sell those commodities mals, cultivating plants, and staying in ing in concentrations of labor around without outside regulation or inter- one place. That was a totally new idea. mines and mills.The process elevated ference....As wants multiplied, as Simply by staying put, the proto- technology and commerce to a markets grew more and more far- farmers altered the face of the planet, prominent position in human soci- flung, the bond between humans and the thoughts of humankind, and the ety—above religion and ethics. the rest of nature was reduced to the shape of society in ways they could Again everything changed in barest instrumentalism.”1 never have foreseen. ways that no one could have imag- That bare instrumentalism led to For the first time it made sense to ined. Machines, not land, incredible productivity and own land. People who didn’t have to became the central a world that now sup- carry all their possessions on their means of production. ports, at varying levels backs could accumulate things, and Feudalism gave way of sufficiency, 6,000 some could accumulate more than to capitalism and million people—more others.The ideas of wealth, status, to capitalism’s than 600 times the inheritance, trade, money, and power dissenting population existing were born. Some people could live offshoot, before the agricultural on excess food produced by others. communism. Roads, revolution. Far-flung They could become full-time tool- railroads, factories, and markets and swelling makers, musicians, scribes, priests, sol- smokestacks appeared on the land- demands drive environmental diers, athletes, or kings.Thus arose, for scape. Cities swelled.Again the exploitation from the poles to the better or worse, guilds, orchestras, change was a mixed blessing. Factory tropics, from the mountaintops to the libraries, temples, armies, competitive labor was even harder and more ocean depths.The success of the games, dynasties, and cities. demeaning than farm labor.The air industrial revolution, like the previous As its inheritors, we think of the and waters near the new factories successes of hunting-gathering and of agricultural revolution as a great step turned unspeakably filthy.The stan- agriculture, eventually created its own forward.At the time it was probably a dard of living for most of the indus- scarcity, not only of game, not only of mixed blessing.