"It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the rest of the world for not getting it ... The point has to be made patiently and repeatedly, day after day after day," Dana Meadows wrote in 1972.
Meadows, an environmental studies professor at the College, certainly lives by her own credo.
Twenty-three years after writing the controversial best-selling book titled "The Limits to Growth," the professor, author, journalist, biophysicist and farmer continues her work by challenging subconscious beliefs that shape our models of thinking, called paradigms.
Meadows has lived on a communal organic farm in Plainfield since she first came to Dartmouth in 1972. It is a relatively energy-efficient complex where the residents grow much of their own food.
"It's hard work, but it's wonderful and I wouldn't ever leave it," she said. "For me it's the perfect way to live."
Meadows has also been interested in Zen Buddhism since 1985, when she met a Zen monk in California. Zen philosophy says the path to enlightenment is awakened by a sudden breaking through the boundaries of common, everyday, logical thought.
"Zen is all about paradigm-breaking. Maybe that's why it appeals to me," she said. "And paradigms seem to be one of the themes of my life."
Meadows draws an analogy between paradigms and concepts in physics. "They are like the particle and the anti-particle. They are both there all the time, but we only see one. We see the pessimistic and negative side, but we usually don't look at the optimistic, visionary side."
Meadows gained international recognition and criticism in 1972 after the publication of "Limits to Growth," which attacked the industrial-era paradigm that "all growth is good."
The book was a report for the Club of Rome, an international group of businessmen, statesmen and scientists involved in a project called the Predicament of Mankind. Meadows got involved with the Club of Rome after earning her Ph.D. from Harvard in Biophysics.
Meadows planned to return to Harvard to complete her post-doctoral work, but the Club of Rome asked her for a two-year study to investigate the long-term effects of population growth, resource consumption and pollution.
"The minute I had the opportunity to become an environmentalist, I turned on a dime and went that way," Meadows said.
But her "quantum leap" in lifestyle came after a trip through Asia.
Meadows and her husband spent a year driving from Turkey to India, living simply and without much money. They lived in the villages with the local people and eventually adopted their lifestyle.
After returning home to suburban Illinois, she said she realized how much richer life in rural Asia had been.
"They did everything themselves and didn't buy it. They did with what they had and they each had a clear sense of self-identity," she said. "What I saw when I came home were sad people in the middle of all their 'stuff.' We never bought into the American consumer message again," she said.
Two weeks later, the Club of Rome came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology just as Meadows was about to leave for Harvard.
The result of the two-year project was a computer model of the world called World 3 and its explanation in "Limits to Growth." During this time, Meadows worked without pay and without assignment. She concluded in the book that if present trends continued unchanged, the limits to growth on the planet would be reached in about 100 years.
The book reached The New York Times bestseller list and was published in 28 different languages.
Meadows said "Limits to Growth" created a furor -- especially because it attacked a major paradigm. "Growth is the true paradigm and religion of the industrial era. You can't just say 'growth' and 'limits' together. I did and got hit."
The same year the book was published, Meadows joined the College's faculty.
She and Dennis Meadows "wanted to get out of the city and live more simply and sustainably. We looked around for a good college with a good computer system and farms nearby," she said.
"Dartmouth fit very well."
Meadows was one of the first four female professors at the College. She has taught a number of courses since then in areas like global population, and environmental ethics.
In 1980, she and her former husband started the International Network of Resource Information Centers.
INRIC, which continues today, is a worldwide "think tank." It consists of systems-oriented centers in more than 20 countries and scientists and economists from all over the world.
Meadows has also served as a consultant for the U.S. government and many foreign governments.
As government analysts, she and Thayer Engineering School masters students created an energy-planning model used in the Carter, the Bush and now the Clinton administration.
During this time, Meadows became a journalist. Her columns have been featured in more than 20 newspapers throughout the United States.
Meadows said one of the reasons she became a journalist was because she found that the media is the best way to get people to think differently and break their paradigms.
"I became a journalist to do this and because I was mad at Ronald Reagan and George Will. The whole discussion in the mid-80s was becoming so wildly unscientific and uneconomic and I couldn't stand it," Meadows said.
In 1992, Meadows wrote "Beyond the Limits," a re-write of "Limits to Growth," with Dennis Meadows and Norwegian physicist Jorgen Randers.
"We [wrote] it on purpose to give sort of a 20-year update on the limits to growth. Lots of people and friends also asked us to do it in the years leading up to it," she said.
"Beyond the Limits" justifies and strengthens the conclusions made in 1972.
The authors wrote: "These conclusions constitute a conditional warning, not a dire prediction. And we hope the world will make a choice for sustainability. We think that a better world is possible, and that the acceptance of physical limits is the first step toward getting there."
Her efforts earned her the MacArthur fellowship last summer, which is a five-year endowment. Earlier she earned the three-year Pew fellowship in conservation and the environment.
"If you gave me a choice between the Pulitzer or completely, without recognition, getting the U.S. off its growth fixation, I would much, much rather get the U.S. off its growth fixation and never get credit for it."
In the future, Meadows hopes to continue doing what she is doing now. But she would like to have more influence than she has had.
"I'd like to see the world moving toward accepting limits and living gracefully within them," she said.
"But with paradigms, you don't want to let that 'other' stuff into your brain. You don't want to make your eyes focus on that because it is so disgusting. And that's how some people feel about the idea that growth has to be limited or that we could get along together by loving."
