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Witness History: The book that warned 2020 would bring disaster

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The book that warned 2020 would bring disaster

08/01/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, The book that warned 2020 would bring disaster

The book describing a sudden uncontrollable downturn that was ignored by governments.

In 1972, the authors of The Limits to Growth used a computer model to gauge the future if economic trends continued unabated. The analysis suggested global decline from 2020.

The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 and warned of global decline from 2020. Claire Bowes spoke to one of the authors of the book, Professor Dennis Meadows, in 2019.  He described how they used computer modelling to analyse how the Earth would cope with unrestricted economic growth. In the early 1970s he and his team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology fed in huge amounts of data on population, pollution, industrialisation, food production and resources. They found that if the trends continued, the result would be a sudden and uncontrollable downturn beginning around 2020. This programme was first broadcast in January 2020 but in this edition we catch up with Professor Meadows for a final thought on the significance of the global pandemic during 2020.

Image: Front cover of The Limits to Growth, published in 1972

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