Heinberg interviews Meadows

Fifty years after 'The limits to Growth', Dennis Meadows is interviewed by Richard Heinberg

Dennis and Donella Meadows were two of the authors of the 1972 book 'The Limits to Growth', which modeled the constraints lokely to be imposed by resource limits, emissions and pollution on population and economic growth, and warned that the diversion of capital and manpower necessary to combat these restraints might lead to a decline in the average quality of life sometime in the twenty-first century.  The warning was largely ignored, despite being reinforced by the subsequent publication of 'Beyond the Limits' in 1992 and 'Limits to Growth: the 30-year Update' in 2004.

Now, fifty years after 'The limits to Growth',  Dennis Meadows is interviewed by Richard Heinberg, one of the world's leading climate scientists.  One of the themes which comes out in the interview centres around short-termism and self-interest in relation to climate change

"Action requires not just openness, but also resources and concern. I’ve been able to convince people that, for example, climate change is coming. They don’t take action, not because they don’t believe me, but because they just don’t care. They’re focused on a short-term perspective within which the current system is giving them the power and the money they aspire to. They see no need for change.
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"The dominant issue we face is that the current system is serving the interests of many people very well. There are a lot of people who get wealth and political power from the current system. And of course, when somebody else recommends a change, the people with that power are going to resist, and they have resisted. The fossil fuel industry is one example, but there are thousands. You can’t understand the nuclear debate if you don’t realize that some people are making millions of dollars by building nuclear reactors. "

Read the full interview