Groping in the Dark: The First Decade of Global Modelling

Description

Editors: Donella Meadows, John Richardson, Gerhart Bruckmann

Groping in the Dark contains the proceedings of the Sixth International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Symposium on Global Modelling. It collects the most significant work in the field of large-scale computer modelling, extracts important highlights and conclusions from the conference in addition to presenting complete proceedings.

Publisher: Wiley, 1982

About Donella Meadows: Dr. Donella H. Meadows was an inspiring leader, scholar, writer, teacher, a Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and a MacArthur Fellow, and was one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the twentieth century. After receiving a Ph.D in biophysics from Harvard, she joined a team at MIT applying the relatively new tools of System Dynamics to global problems. The joint Harvard-MIT research group she was a member of developed a computer simulation model clarifying relationships between growth and finite resources on the earth. Using this model, the Club of Rome sponsored extensive research that resulted in the best-selling book The Limits to Growth  (1972), which sold more than 9 million copies in 26 languages.  Attention was focused on a doomsday prognosis if growth continued unchecked. Meadows and her associates, however, presented options for achieving a sustainable society if there were a movement away from dependence on growth, equity in wealth, and if technologies were used to enhance efficiency of natural-resource use. Toward Global Equilibrium (1973) and "Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World" (1974) are companion technical volumes to The Limits to Growth. They present reports on the simulation models, examinations of economic, political, and ethical implications of the findings, and a detailed description of the computer model, World3.

She went on to author or co-author eight other books, two of which include Limits to Growth: 30 Year Update and Beyond the Limits (1992). In Beyond the Limits, Meadows and her co-authors find that some options for a sustainable future have narrowed. However, they claim that new technologies can, if employed wisely, contribute to sustainability. The book emphasizes social-policy options rather than models.

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