| Special
Issue of The Systems Thinker
Moving
Toward a Sustainable Future
Please
download and forward this special issue to your
friends and colleagues.
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With
the tragic impact of the recent natural disasters
and the growing evidence of global warming, 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 updating 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, in the November 2005 issue
of The Systems Thinker, we published Chapter
8 of The Limits to Growth:The 30-Year Update in
its entirety. Because any large-scale
change effort requires a critical mass of engaged
and interested people working together, we are making
this special issue of The Systems Thinker available
free of charge. We would like to encourage
you to forward it 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.
Download/read
the complete issue or see The
Systems Thinker, V16N9 (November, 2005).
This special issue of the newsletter is free.
Please forward it to your friends and colleagues.
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