Sober Optimist ~ We've Just Exactly Enough Time

The latest MIT Sloan Management Review interviews Professor John Sterman in A Sober Optimist’s Guide to Sustainability. Sterman covers a wide range of items, including defining sustainability, describing his own and MIT colleagues efforts, and towards the end, quotes his mentor Dana Meadows...

"...if you believe that the world is unlimited, that technology will always be there with a solution that lets you have more, that markets always work perfectly, then we will never change what we're doing and we will inevitably crash into the physical limits of the planet. On the other hand, if you say it's too late, that there's too many of us, that we're too greedy, that no change is possible, then we might as well just give up and for sure we're going to get what we expect. What Dana worked for is to live as if there's just exactly enough time. There's enough time to do it, with no time to waste. Just exactly enough time, enough resources, enough environmental resilience and enough human compassion to bring about the change we need to create a sustainable world."