This is day two of our exponential growth demonstration. I hope you’re doing this at home or school or the office. We began two days ago with one grain of wheat. Yesterday we doubled the wheat, and here’s what we got…

Today let’s double that. Here’s a quick summary of Limits to Growth, courtesy of the Club of Rome. Be patient while it loads, and don’t click below on “Click to Play;” for some reason WordPress is not making life easy for me today.

So, what is this Club of Rome that commissioned the Limits to Growth study in 1970? It is actually a pretty amazing and forward-looking group of people. It sprang from an April, 1968 meeting of academics, industrialists, diplomats and other leading thinkers at a villa in Rome. They were invited by Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Scottish scientist Alexander King (King appears briefly in an historical clip in the GrowthBusters movie.) At the villa they discussed the predominance of short-term thinking in international affairs and concerns about increasing resource consumption in what was becoming a global economy. . . .

I thought I’d interrupt the series of posts honoring the Limits to Growth 40^th anniversary today, as tonight I leave Australia and head home after two weeks of GrowthBusters screenings, great audience response, intelligent conversations and warm friendship. I regret I did not get to see every Australian who has supported and cheered on the GrowthBusters project, but on the plus side I made several new friends.

Had lunch yesterday with successful Australian businessman, Dick Smith, a growthbuster if ever there was one. Dick is fond of saying,

“We can’t have perpetual growth in the use of energy and resources.”

He thinks that’s just common sense. We talked at lunch about how most people agree, but for some reason they can’t make the next logical step, to thinking about whether this would be a good time to say, “Okay, that’s enough.” As we were saying goodbye, I ambushed Dick with my pocket video camera and he offered this greeting:

You may see Dick at the Sydney screening of GrowthBusters next Tuesday night. Screenings remain for Sydney, Perth and Darwin. . . .

“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”

– U.S. President Ronald Reagan

“Oh, yeh?

– Greenpeace International co-Founder Rex Weyler

What more can I say? This is a moment from a wonderful interview with environmental leader and journalist Rex Weyler. Filmed in June, 2010 for the GrowthBusters movie, but did not make it into the film.

I’m on day seven (missed yesterday) of my exponential growth demonstration. If you’re trying this at home, double the grains of wheat in your container. We had 32, so now we’ll have 64.

Dave Gardner
Filmmaker . . .

On March 1 the Club of Rome and the Smithsonian co-hosted an historic, day-long symposium, Perspectives on Limits to Growth, offering reflections on The Limits to Growth, the landmark study released in 1972. Two of the scientists involved in that study (who went on to author the book, as well as updates ten, twenty and thirty years later), Dennis Meadows and Jørgen Randers, were among those who spoke. This is a lot of video, and it begins with the obligatory welcomes, etc. from the dignitaries. But there are some great presentations here, especially those from Meadows and Randers, that are well worth watching.

This is day six of our exponential growth demonstration. I hope you’re doing this at home with your children or spouse, or at work with your colleagues. It’s going to get interesting. If you want to catch up, head over to our Limits to Growth 40th anniversary page, where you can easily access the blog posts explaining the demonstration. Yesterday we had 16 grains of wheat in our container. Today let’s double that, for 32. . . .

I skipped a day in this Limits to Growth blog series and the exponential growth demonstration. My Australia tour had me exhausted and something had to give. But today I’m back, with day five on the demonstration. Yesterday we were at 8 grains of wheat. Today, double that for 16.

Be sure to take the Think Small pledge. Make a difference, and encourage your friends to take the pledge. Thank you.

I’m very pleased to share this guest post by Samuel Alexander, co-founder of The Simplicity Collective. This is a brief introduction to a full paper available at The Simplicity Collective website. Samuel was one of the musical contributors to the GrowthBusters Earth Day Fundraiser Soundtrack album released last year (still available in our store). You can hear more of Sam’s very relevant music here. I’d like to thank Sam for this paper and contribution to our series, and for his contribution of music. As we contemplate limits to growth, it is very sensible to wonder how we might elegantly live within those limits. Dr. Alexander offers some food for thought. . . .