NY Times, February 22, 2001
Donella Meadows, 59, Author, and Advocate for Environment
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Dr. Donella Hager Meadows, an author, educator and advocate for the
environment, died Tuesday at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon,
N.H. She was 59 and lived in Hartland Four Corners, N.H.
The cause was bacterial meningitis, said Prof. Jack E. Shepherd Jr., a
friend and colleague at Dartmouth, where she was an adjunct professor of
environmental sciences.
Dr. Meadows, known as Dana, was a MacArthur Fellow and the lead author of
"The Limits of Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the
Predicament of Mankind," published in 1972. The book delivered a simple
message: either civilization or growth must end.
The book stated that continued population and industrial growth would
exhaust the world's minerals and steep the planet in lethal levels of
pollution.
If trends continued unchanged, the authors said, the limits of growth would
be reached within 100 years. They urged "deliberate checks" on economic and
population growth.
Their thesis was sharply disputed at the time, but the book sold nine
million copies and was translated into 28 languages. It was produced by an
interdisciplinary team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
financed by the Club of Rome, an international research organization that
studies "the complex of problems troubling men of all nations," like
poverty, alienated youth and monetary disruptions.
In 1992, she and her co-authors, Jorgen Randers and Dr. Dennis L. Meadows,
her former husband, published an update, "Beyond the Limits: Confronting
Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future."
Based partly on new computer simulations, the book warned that unless human
activity changed, humans would "overshoot" the carrying capacity of the
planet in decades.
Both books remain in print, as does a selection from "The Global Citizen,"
the weekly syndicated column she wrote.
Dana Meadows was born in Elgin, Ill., and graduated from Carleton College
in Minnesota in 1963. She received a doctorate in biophysics from Harvard
University in 1968.
She was a researcher in the Department of Nutrition at M.I.T. when "The
Limits of Growth" report was written.
She later taught and researched at centers in Hawaii, Austria and Norway.
In 1972, she joined an interdisciplinary program at Dartmouth, the Resource
Policy Center, rising to associate professor.
She and her former husband founded the International Network of Research
Information Centers, in which they organized training programs and
workshops in resource management in Europe, Central America, Africa, Asia
and the United States. In 1994, the John D. and Catherine MacArthur
Foundation, known for its "genius grants," selected her for a fellowship
and awarded her $320,000 over five years.
Dr. Meadows is survived by her parents, Phebe Quist of Tahlequah, Okla.,
and Don Hager of Palatine, Ill.; and a brother, Jason Hager of Waterford,
Wis. Her former husband lives in Durham, N.H.
Louis Proyect
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