In 1972, a group of young researchers at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston published the study
"The Limits to Growth"
in which the problems caused to the Earth's ecosystem by the continuous growth of the world's population and its unchecked development were highlighted for the first time. In 2007, director
Enrico Cerasuolo, in collaboration with Gaetano Capizzi,
director of Cinemambiente, and Luca Mercalli, one of Italy's best-known climatologists, decided to make a
documentary that tries to understand, forty years on,
whether we still have time to change our habits, whether we still have time for one last call.

On the occasion of the
sixteenth edition of the Cinemambiente festival in Turin, where
the documentary is competing in the "La casa di domani" category,
we put three questions to director Enrico Cerasuolo.

How did the project come about?

The project was born many years ago, in 2007, thanks to Gaetano
Capizzi and Luca Mercalli. Since then there has been a lengthy process
of research and contact with the people featured in the book "The
Limits to Growth", culminating in Washington in March 2012, on
the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its first presentation.
Over the past year we managed to complete all the filming we still needed and to finish the archival research; six years after
the idea, it has finally become a film.

Who are the characters in this documentary film and
how has their view of the world changed from 1972 to
today?

"The Limits to Growth" was the fruit of a group effort. The core of that group are the
main characters of "Ultima Chiamata". The inspirers of the
book are Aurelio Peccei, from Turin, one of the first Italian entrepreneurs
to grasp the problem of globalisation, and the American
Jay Forrester, one of the fathers of the computer age and founder
of "systems dynamics", the science that studies the interaction
between complex systems.

The authors of the book are a group of researchers from MIT in
Boston: Dennis and Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Bill Behrens.
Donella Meadows passed away in 2001 and lives on in the film
through archival material. The characters who are still active today
are the other three authors. According to Dennis Meadows, who over
these years has been the group's spokesperson, today it is
too late to harbour any illusion of being able to achieve
sustainability. The new goals that Meadows encourages us to
pursue are different ones, such as resilience — that is, the
ability to absorb a shock while continuing to
function — and the ability to solve universal problems
(water quality, air quality) at a local level. Jorgen
Randers, a Norwegian, recently published "2052", a book in which
he sets out his forecast for the next forty years. For
Randers the most worrying scenario is the one linked
to CO2 emissions and climate change. Bill Behrens
installs solar panels and believes in the importance of renewable energy.

Why have their forecasts been so fiercely opposed in economic and
political circles?

"The Limits to Growth" did not make forecasts, nor
predictions. It offered possibilities for rational choice
for the future. There are many reasons why the book sparked
a great deal of controversy. The first is that for the first time it called
into question the concept of physical growth within a finite system
such as planet Earth. For most economists, even
today, growth is a dogma. From a political standpoint,
both in Europe and in the United States, the book provoked clashes
from which the opponents of the report emerged victorious. For the
free-market right, any restriction on markets and a birth-control policy were enemies to be fought, yet the left
and the developing countries were also opposed to calling into question a growth from which the industrialised countries had
already benefited. But the one that came out defeated was
the environment.