Dennis Meadows

Dennis L. Meadows ( born June 7, 1942 in Montana) is an American economist. His first wife was Donella H. Meadows.

Life and work

Meadows grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. He studied at Carleton College in the same state chemistry and graduated there in June 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts. In the years 1963 and 1964 he worked in the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, which at that time was under the U.S. Department of Energy. His management studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he graduated with his doctorate. He was director of three university research institutions, MIT, Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire. In addition, he served as a professor at various faculties: Engineering, Management and Social Sciences. They also focused on team building and System Thinking for managers and politicians. He is now Professor Emeritus and Director of the Laboratory of Interactive Learning in New Hampshire.

Using a computer aided simulation determined Meadows in his appointed by the Club of Rome study The Limits to Growth (1972, English Original title:. Limits to Growth ), the system behavior of the Earth as an economic area by 2100 co-authors was his wife Donella H. Meadows and. Norwegian Jørgen Randers. The used model was based on a number of known relationships between the parameters and time delays between causes and effects. Five different scenarios showed that the world economy will collapse in the current economic and population growth due to food shortages, pollution and scarcity of raw materials before the year 2100. This has the consequence that the prosperity will decline massively and feeding the world's population can no longer be assured. Only through massive effort as birth control and environmental protection as well as economical raw material cycles could be achieved long-term stability of the world economy. The study was updated by Meadows and his co-authors in the years 1992 and 2004, respectively.

Since 1982 Meadows Designs Board Games with which thinking can be rehearsed in categories of sustainability. One of the most famous is Fishbanks Ltd..

Meadows is a member of the Club of Vienna and co-founder of the Balaton Group. In 1975 he was honored with the Bavarian Nature Conservation price, on 7 November 2007 with the Berlin Peace Clock Award, on 23 April 2009 with the Japan Prize.

Meadows lives after his retirement today with his second wife in New Hampshire.

Publications

  • Donella H. Meadows with Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III: The Limits to Growth. Universe Books, 1972, ISBN 0-87663-165-0 The Limits to Growth. Transferring Hans -Dieter Heck. German Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-421-02633-5; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1973, ISBN 3-499-16825-1
  • The new frontiers of growth. Transferring Hans -Dieter Heck. German Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-421-06626-4; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-19510-0
  • Limits to Growth, the 30-year update. Signal to change course. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-7776-1384-0
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