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As on April 5, 2011 Taken from: Wikipedia - The Limits to Growth Introduction The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Its authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used the World model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth's and human systems. The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Five variables were examined in the original model, on the assumptions that exponential growth accurately described their patterns of increase, and that the ability of technology to increase the availability of resources grows only linearly. These variables are: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The authors intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables. In 2010, Professors Peet, Nørgård, and Ragnarsdóttir called the book a "pioneering report", but said that, "unfortunately the report has been largely dismissed by critics as a doomsday prophecy that has not held up to scrutiny." The most recent updated version was published on June 1, 2004 by Chelsea Green Publishing Company and Earthscan under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Donnella Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have updated and expanded the original version. They had previously published Beyond the Limits in 1993 as a 20 year update on the original material. In 2008 Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia published a paper called "A Comparison of `The Limits to Growth` with Thirty Years of Reality". It examined the past thirty years of reality with the predictions made in 1972 and found that changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the book's predictions of economic and societal collapse in the 21st century. Purpose The purpose of The Limits to Growth was not to make specific predictions, but to explore how exponential growth interacts with finite resources. Because the size of resources is not known, only the general behavior can be explored. The authors state in a subsection titled The Purpose of the World Model:
Exponential reserve index One key idea that The Limits to Growth discusses is that if the rate of resource use is increasing, the amount of reserves cannot be calculated by simply taking the current known reserves and dividing by the current yearly usage, as is typically done to obtain a static index. For example, in 1972, the amount of chromium reserves was 775 million metric tons, of which 1.85 million metric tons were mined annually (see exponential growth). The static index is 775 / 1.85 = 418 years, but the rate of chromium consumption was growing at 2.6% annually (Limits to Growth, pp 54–71). If instead of assuming a constant rate of usage, the assumption of a constant rate of growth of 2.6% annually is made, the resource will instead last: ln(1-(1-1.026)x418)/ln(1.026) = 95 years (note that the book rounded off numbers). In general, the formula for calculating the amount of time left for a resource with constant consumption growth is: y = (log(1-(1-g)x(r/c))/log(g)) - 1 where: y = years left; g = 1.026 (2.6% annual consumption growth); r = reserve; c = (annual) consumption. The authors list a number of similar exponential indices comparing current reserves to current reserves multiplied by a factor of five:
Related books Many books, some of which became bestsellers, about humanity’s uncertain future have appeared regularly over the years. Precursors to Limits to Growth included Harrison Brown’s The Challenge of Man’s Future (1956), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968). The most notable books to be published after 1972 and up to the end of the millennium included the State of the World reports issued by the Worldwatch Institute (produced annually since 1984); the influential Our Common Future, published by the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (1987); Earth in the Balance, written by then-US senator Al Gore (1992); and Earth Odyssey by journalist Mark Hertsgaard (1999), which "reported on eight years of travel all over the globe to observe the demise of Nature and the degradation of the World". Since that time, the number of similar titles published and copies sold has itself grown significantly, all documenting evidence that the world is "growing dangerously and spinning out of control". Criticism Many prominent economists, scientists and political figures criticised the Limits to Growth. They attacked the methodology, the computer, the conclusions, the rhetoric and the people behind the project. The book’s authors found themselves on the defensive. Yale economist Henry C. Wallich labeled the book "a piece of irresponsible nonsense" in a Newsweek editorial dated March 13, 1972. Wallich's main complaints are that the book was published as a publicity stunt with great fanfare at the Smithsonian in Washington, and that there was insufficient evidence for many of the variables used in the model. According to Wallich, "the quantitative content of the model comes from the authors' imagination, although they never reveal the equations that they used." Wallich stated that technology could solve all the problems the Meadows were concerned about, but only if growth continued apace. By stopping growth too soon, Wallich warned, the world would be "consigning billions to permanent poverty". Robert M. Solow from MIT, complained about the weak base of data on which The Limits to Growths predictions were made (Newsweek, March 13, 1972, page 103). Dr. Allen Kneese and Dr. Ronald Riker of Resources for the Future (RFF) stated:
Critics also allege that the authors of the report claimed to accept that the then-known resources of minerals and energy could, and would, grow in the future, and consumption growth rates could also decline. The theoretical expiry time for each resource would therefore need to be updated as new discoveries, technologies and trends came to light. To overcome this uncertainty, they offered an upper value for the expiry time, calculated as if the known resources were multiplied by two. Even in that case, assuming continuation of the average rate of consumption growth, virtually all major minerals and energy resources would expire within 100 years of publication (i.e., by 2070). Even if reserves were two times larger than expected, they state, ongoing growth in the consumption rate would still lead to the relatively rapid exhaustion of those reserves. In 2008 researcher Peter A. Victor wrote, that even though D.H. Meadows et al. probably underestimated price-mechanism's role in adjusting, their critics have overestimated it. He states that Limits to Growth has had a huge impact on how we still think about environmental issues and notes that the models in the book were meant to be taken as predictions "only in the most limited sense of the word" as they wrote. |