Embrace Limits to Foster Sustainable Growth

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Expanding complex systems often leads to more challenging problems, making it crucial to manage and stabilize growth before reaching limitations. Solutions should include setting our own sustainable limits rather than allowing nature to impose them. Investigating resource requirements for global well-being reveals the need for renewable energy, efficient technologies, organic agriculture, and regulations for product longevity and recyclability. Additionally, supporting education, family planning, and lifestyle changes can help mitigate environmental impact, reduce land use, and limit urban sprawl, highlighting the importance of growth within defined boundaries.

In 1972, a team of young scientists at MIT published a study exploring what would happen to human civilization if people kept pursuing endless economic growth on a finite planet. They weren’t just disbelieved, they were ridiculed. The story of Donella Meadows and The Limits to Growth.

Reported and produced by Katy Shields and Vegard Beyer, with co-hosts John Biewen and Ellen McGirt. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Archival audio of Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Aurelio Peccei, Jay Forrester, and others. Interviewee: John Fullerton.Original music by Nora Beyer. Additional music by Michelle Osis and Lili Haydn. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. "Capitalism” is a production of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, in partnership with Imperative 21.