Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): Today is Donella Meadows birthday. Had she lived, she'd be 81 years old today. https://twitter.com/bethsawin/status/1503100219260551177/photo/1
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): So much of my life would have gone a different way had I not met and learned from and worked with her. Where I live, who my neighbors are and what we are trying to do together. Where and how my kids grew up. What my work is.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): Eleven days ago was the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Limits to Growth, of which she was a co-author. Had world leaders understood and acted on the message of this group of systems scientists, we'd be in a different reality today.... https://twitter.com/bethsawin/status/1503101657856491527/photo/1
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): ...coasting back within ecological limits, and having grappled with questions of equity and justice. We don't know what that world would have been link, and surely it would have had it's own challenges...
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): ...but the odds of climate disasters and pandemics triggered by ecological disruption would be less in that imagined world, and, I'd like to believe societies would be wiser, healthier, and fairer.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): I ask myself a fair bit, what would Dana say/think/do in these times? That's a dangerous question of course, because she would have learned and grown and questioned and thought along with the rest of us. She'd surely have different views.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): But I find a surprising amount of relevance in her words on the page, two decades after her death. Maybe I'll close with a few I've been thinking about lately....
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): "I think what we need to do is to brush away some of our training & rediscover our ability to vision, to see goals, to make the idea of a sustainable world a living picture in our minds and other people’s minds....
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): .....so that we know what we are talking about and know where we’re going." From a 1994 talk Envisioning a Sustainable World. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2016/02/22/envisioning-a-sustainable-world/
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): "For both practical and moral reasons, a sustainable society must provide sufficiency and security for all." From a briefing pamphlet accompanying the 30 year update to LTG, as is this next quote too.👇
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): "The necessity of taking the industrial world to its next stage of evolution is not a disaster—it is an amazing opportunity.....
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): ....How to seize the opportunity, how to bring into being a world that is not only sustainable, functional, and equitable but also deeply desirable is a question of leadership and ethics and vision and courage, properties not of computer models but of the human heart and soul."
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): And finally for these uncertain times, from her essay Dancing With Systems (which was included in her book Thinking in Systems).."The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. ...
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): ....Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them."
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin (@bethsawin): "We can’t impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone."