This Wednesday, one of the most discussed texts in economic history turned half a century old.

To celebrate the anniversary, the environmental network Club of Rome brought together some top-class representatives of the environmental debate in a digital webinar.

And when you hear Dennis Meadows, the coordinator and lead author of The Limits to Growth, in his black cap and his voice still youthful and haunting after 79 years, it becomes clear how little the original questions have changed since then.

Phillip Krohn

Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".

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"The Limits to Growth", as the 1972 report presented to the Club of Rome is originally called, is two things: It is the best and at the same time the worst book on sustainability.

Curse and blessing.

It was a bestseller that shaped the debate about the conflict between economic expansion and ecological exploitation for decades.

It's the best because no other scientific work has made it so unequivocally clear that resource depletion and overexploitation of natural sinks are reaching the world's biophysical limits.

Earlier than others, it addressed topics that are still relevant today, such as climate change and resource overexploitation, very precisely and based on the best literature available at the time.

It is also the worst environmental book because it brought a Malthusian determinism into the debate.

In the early 18th century, the British economist Robert Thomas Malthus put forward the thesis that population development would come into conflict with the slower expansion of food.

He suggested population control as a way out.

The Malthusian at the “Limits of Growth”

So how was The Limits to Growth Malthusian?

In their study, Meadows and his colleagues at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology related 99 elements that model the economy to one another in complex control loops.

On this basis, they have calculated a dozen scenarios of what will happen if exponential growth continues or slows down.

The authors have pointed out several times that these are not forecasts.

But in the further course of the book they use the findings in part as if they were forecasts.

Despite the complexity of their world model, the authors, then in their late twenties, did not anticipate certain developments.

At the same time, they have introduced a Malthus-like determinism into the environmental debate.

Many environmental activists have made themselves comfortable in their criticism of growth and no longer thought about constructive steps to solve the problem of resources and sinks.

And critics of the report could make it easy for themselves by pointing out the wrong forecasts and ignoring the issue of biophysical limits, which is one of the key challenges to sustainable development today.

In the webinar, unsurprisingly, positive appraisals predominate.

When you turn 50, you invite friends over.

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, called Meadows one of his heroes.

As the father of earth system modeling, he laid the foundations for today's research that describes the consequences of climate change.

It was only later that precise data was collected.

"You precisely sketched the journey of mankind 50 years ago," said Rockström.

It was a path to ecological disaster.

Politicians failed to address the challenges addressed in the report in a timely manner.

"Today we therefore have to set hard limits," said the Swedish resilience researcher in the digital discussion.

influence on the political debate

The MIT researchers made a big impression with their model of the world.

Politicians around the world listened to the results.

In Germany, the team received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

At a time when the social-liberal coalition was aiming for blue skies over the Ruhr area, the book provided some impetus.

Under Chancellor Willy Brandt, “quality of life” became a counter-goal to quantitative growth.

But at the same time, the approach was also the subject of criticism.

With many figures and diagrams, the authors have ignited smoke screens.

At the same time, it has not been possible to convey fundamental knowledge of the law of entropy, which has only just been observed in the economic context, to a broader public.

Economists like Herman Daly (whom Meadows called his favorite economist on Wednesday), Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Kenneth Boulding had pioneered this.

Boulding's 1966 essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, a mere 12 pages long, is a more constructive text on growth limits than The Limits to Growth and remains relevant today.

In an interview for a portrait in the FAZ ten years ago, Meadows complained about how little he was asked about his topics.

His comments on sustainability are quite valuable.

"I'm optimistic about our species.

I'm only pessimistic for the energy-intensive society," he said.

He recommended recognizing the physical limits and deriving options for action from them.

The prevailing growth paradigm in business and politics is still standing in the way of sustainable development.

For these, more positive images would have to be designed.

In order to adapt to environmental challenges, more resilience is needed - from the individual to international communities.

And the view of the environment must change.

"We need to start respecting the non-monetary aspects of the environment," he said.