Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse

Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander in the Guardian (UK): The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.

It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.

Limits to Growth was commissioned by a think tank called the Club of Rome. Researchers working out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including husband-and-wife team Donella and Dennis Meadows, built a computer model to track the world’s economy and environment. Called World3, this computer model was cutting edge.

The task was very ambitious. The team tracked industrialisation, population, food, use of resources, and pollution. They modelled data up to 1970, then developed a range of scenarios out to 2100, depending on whether humanity took serious action on environmental and resource issues. If that didn’t happen, the model predicted “overshoot and collapse” – in the economy, environment and population – before 2070. This was called the “business-as-usual” scenario.

The book’s central point, much criticised since, is that “the earth is finite” and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash.

So were they right? We decided to check in with those scenarios after 40 years. Dr Graham Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social affairs, Unesco, the food and agriculture organisation, and the UN statistics yearbook). He also checked in with the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration, the BP statistical review, and elsewhere. That data was plotted alongside the Limits to Growth scenarios.

The results show that the world is tracking pretty closely to the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario. The data doesn’t match up with other scenarios...

Scientists vindicate 'Limits to Growth' – urge investment in 'circular economy'

Nafeez Ahmed in the Guardian (UK): According to a new peer-reviewed scientific report, industrial civilisation is likely to deplete its low-cost mineral resources within the next century, with debilitating impacts for the global economy and key infrastructures within the coming decade.

The study, the 33rd report to the Club of Rome, is authored by Prof Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence's Earth Sciences Department, and includes contributions from a wide range of senior scientists across relevant disciplines.

The Club of Rome is a Swiss-based global think tank consisting of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders. Its first report in 1972, The Limits to Growth, was conducted by a scientific team at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT), and warned that limited availability of natural resources relative to rising costs would undermine continued economic growth by around the second decade of the 21st century.

Although widely ridiculed, recent scientific reviews confirm that the original report's projections in its 'base scenario' remain robust. In 2008, Australia's federal government scientific research agency CSIRO concluded that The Limits to Growth forecast of potential "global ecological and economic collapse coming up in the middle of the 21st Century" due to
convergence of "peak oil, climate change, and food and water security", is "on-track." Actual current trends in these areas "resonate strongly with the overshoot and collapse displayed in the book's 'business-as-usual scenario.'"

...The new Club of Rome report says that: "The phase of mining by humans is a spectacular but very brief episode in the geological history of the planet… The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity; they are limits of energy. Extracting minerals takes energy, and the more dispersed the minerals are, the more energy is needed… Only conventional ores can be profitably mined with the amounts of energy we can produce today."

The combination of mineral depletion, associated radioactive and heavy metal pollution, and the accumulation of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel exploitation is leaving our descendants the "heavy legacy" of a virtually terraformed world: "The Earth will never be the same; it is being transformed into a new and different planet."....

Economic degrowth compatible with wellbeing if work stability is maintained

AlphaGalileo via Universtat Autonoma de Barcelona: Policies aimed at effectively mitigating climate change through a reduction in economic growth and consumption of fossil fuels would have a monetary impact on the economy, but also an impact on the wellbeing and happiness of individuals. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the UAB have taken advantage of the current economic crisis to analyse the impact this situation would have.

Scientists used data from a survey conducted in 2011 to measure the degree of happiness and satisfaction in a sample of 950 inhabitants from Barcelona, in relation to their current levels of income and to how they have evolved in the past five years. The questionnaire included data on their level of education, work status, health, consumption habits, and leisure activities, as well as other variables.

With regard to income levels, “when there is work stability, there is a point of inflection in the co-relation of income and happiness” affirms Dr Filka Sekulova, main author of the research: “up to 1,750 euros we can say that money favours happiness, but after this amount the co-relation we observed is negative”.

Dr Sekulova highlights that the fact that “the reduction in salaries in the two years before the survey, from 1,373 to 1,310 euros monthly in average, did not represent a reduction in the level of happiness. Even in more recent periods, reductions in salary periodically presented a positive relation with a subjective wellbeing.” Researchers consider that the most plausible explanation of this positive relation, albeit the reduction in salary, is that there is also a  reduction in working hours and, therefore, an increase in leisure time. Data show that the happiness of individuals is directly related to the hours they work when measured up to 16 hours a week. In contrast, those working more than 16 hours a week are less happy the more hours they work.

“If we apply these results to climate change mitigation policies, we see that reducing consumption and salaries as well as working hours, while maintaining workplaces, can have a positive effective on people's wellbeing” researchers affirm. One must bear in mind however that unemployment, unstable jobs and economic vulnerability caused by the crisis have a very important negative effect on the quality of life, and this can also be seen in the survey....

Man reading The Day Michael Collins Was Shot (by Meda Ryan) in Dupont Circle, NW . WDC . Sunday afternoon, 18 September 2005. Te text on the shirt states: Excellent Growth Potential. Shot by Elvert Xavier Barnes, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Lancet highlights key links between consumption and climate change

AlphaGalileo via the Lancet: Models of future climate scenarios have taken insufficient account of population patterns and trends, according to a UCL review to be published in the print edition of The Lancet on 15th November 2013. The review, “Population, development, and climate change, links and effects on human health”, examines the interconnections between population growth and climate change, from the perspective of global health.

The authors found that while population growth is an important factor, it is consumers, rather than people per se, who drive climate change. Reducing consumption thus represents the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions. This can have substantial health co-benefits, and consideration of human health should therefore be integral to future plans for tackling climate change.

Professor Judith Stephenson, UCL’s Institute for Women’s Health, says: "Disruption of the environment and climate system caused by unprecedented human activity since the industrial revolution confronts us with an urgent and complex problem that requires reduction in growth of both consumption and population for a sustainable world.”

...Although population is an important factor, demographic trends are more significant for climate change than total population, says the review. Consumption patterns, together with ageing and urbanisation in some countries, have bigger implications for health and the reduction of carbon emissions than the total number of people in the world...

A detail of Hieronymous Bosch's "The Seven Deadly Sins"

Reject the god of growth for a sustainable future, says professor

Wales Online (UK): Tomorrow, Professor Tim Jackson, economics commissioner for the Sustainable Development Commission, will be in Swansea to launch a report calling on the UK government to tackle the economic crisis through low carbon recovery measures. Here, he suggests a new way of thinking to meet the challenges that lie ahead:

This year is likely to be seen as a defining moment in economic history. The combination of the severest economic recession since the 1930s; increasingly stark warnings about the risk of accelerating climate change; worsening environmental problems and resource shortages, and the threat of widespread social disruption all leave no room for business- as-usual thinking.

On a more modest scale, 2009 is also a defining moment for the Government. With little more than a year to run in its current term, it faces unprecedented challenges to its own credentials. But it is also presented with a unique opportunity to create lasting change and make a vital transition to a sustainable low carbon economy.

It’s against this backdrop that the Sustainable Development Commission has been developing its advice to the Treasury and to Number 10 regarding the Budget on April 22. The 2008 Pre-Budget Report indicated some significant shifts in the direction of what we have called a Sustainable New Deal, but at nothing like the scale that is now required given such dire threats both to the global economy and to the global environment.

…But the current financial crisis not only presents us with a unique opportunity to begin the transition to a low carbon economy. It provides the space for us to question the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades, and to invest in real change. The reasons behind our current predicament are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability.

When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. In these circumstances, it may seem inopportune to be questioning growth. However, the current crisis is in no small measure a result of our pursuit of growth. So figuring out how to deliver prosperity without growth is more essential now than ever…..

Nicholas Roerich, "Lao Tse" (1943)