Humanity’s Soul: Life or Growth?
The Great Simplification #57 with Gaya Herrington
This Week…
The Limits to Growth (LTG) report is one of the most well known assessments of source and sink constraints to human economic aspirations. LTG has been reviewed and updated numerous times over the last 50 years, most recently by econometrician and sustainability researcher Gaya Herrington. Today, I have a conversation with Gaya about her new book, Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse, a more in-depth and personal telling of her 2021 review of the Limits to Growth study.
Gaya is a Dutch econometrician, sustainability researcher, and women's rights activist. Gaya holds masters’ degrees in both econometrics and sustainability studies. After becoming disillusioned by initially working in the financial sector Gaya became the executive director of StoereVrouwen, a non-profit Dutch women's movement promoting sustainable economic policies through activism. In 2014, Herrington became the Director of Sustainability Services of KPMG. Most recently, her study on the projections made in the 1972 Limits to Growth report was widely publicized internationally. She is currently Vice President Sustainability Research at Schneider Electric.
More than 50 years after the original LTG report was released, the model trajectories remain relevant - and also controversial - as we continue to track the ‘business as usual’ scenario, which results in collapse in the ‘standard run’ of the original LTG model. Are we locked in on this path and are our growth based economic systems optimized to keep us there? Is it possible to shift our goals to a different path, away from growth, focused on the well-being of all life? Can we plan or mitigate the path to descent?
In Case You Missed It…
Last week’s Frankly was about - given our current trajectory - what is and is NOT for sale? A short reflection of my hopes for the future, both for humanity and myself - that we will make decisions we can be proud of and fight to protect what is “priceless”.
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