ABSTRACT
The Limits to Growth was first published in 1972 as a study of economic and population growth in a world of finite resources. The choice of words is much more important than researchers think. "No growth", "equilibrium" or "steady state" were terms that did not work well in communicating our message to the policy world. Most of the criticism of The Limits to Growth over the decades has been due to our inability to communicate clearly that the main issue is the conflict between the growth in the human ecological footprint and the physical limits of the planet. Policy-makers are much more interested in future predictions than in understanding the system's properties themselves. The Limits to Growth presented different scenarios for the future of the world.
