Good morning, EPN,

You might be familiar with the world-famous MIT report The Limits to Growth and the decades long debate it triggered upon its initial release in 1972. Considering factors of population growth, industrial production, food production, ecological footprints, and persistent pollution data, researchers suggested that humanity’s “business as usual” growth trajectories were unsustainable.

This year Gaya Herrington (director, Sustainability Services, KPMG) updated the study’s original research models using decades of observations and current data, finding that if major changes to the consumption of resources are not undertaken, economic growth will peak and then rapidly decline around 2040.

Gaya will present her findings and their implications for environmental professionals at our Tuesday, November 16 EPN Breakfast event The Limits to Growth, Revisited.

These global trends are set against a backdrop of significant population growth in the central Ohio region, as leaders and residents of Columbus, one of 14 cities nationwide to add more than 100,000 residents this past decade, explore this region’s capacity to supply jobs, housing, transportation, and infrastructure to support this growth.

Sandy Doyle-Ahern (president, EMH&T), leader of one of Ohio’s largest professional engineering and survey firms with decades of experience managing regional development projects, will take a deeper look at these issues at a local and regional level and, in a conversation with Josh Knights (Sustainability Institute at Ohio State) and Gaya discuss strategies for what we can do in the 21st Century to both confront this growth and offer strategies towards a different, more ecologically balanced future in Ohio and beyond.

Join us in-person or virtually on November 16th for this engaging and important conversation.

Details here:go.osu.edu/epnnov21

Best wishes,
Joe Campbell and Cecil Okotah