The Parkland Institute

Environment

The limits to growth: a re-examination

A look at the classic book that can still change the world

The planet is finite in its resources, in its ability to produce food, and in its capacity to absorb our wastes. Yet, population and industrial output continue to grow exponentially. The conflict arising from these realities is now becoming apparent. Food and petroleum products are becoming rapidly more expensive and the concentration of greenhouse gases continue to rise.

The rapid rise in food prices, especially rice and wheat, has resulted in food riots in the poorer countries of the world while here, in North America, our own poor are feeling the pinch.

The possibility that these very problems would appear was predicted more than 30 years ago in a best-selling book called The Limits to Growth, a report for The Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, authored by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William Behrens. The Club of Rome was formed in 1968 by an Italian industrialist and a Scottish scientist in order to better understand the global system in which we live and to bring this understanding to the world’s policymakers and the public.

This predicament was, and still is, that while mankind has knowledge of all of the socioeconomic problems challenging the world, it’s unable to solve them:

It is the predicament of mankind that men can perceive the problematique, yet despite his considerable knowledge and skill, he does not understand the origins, significance, and interrelationships of many of its many components and thus is unable to devise effective responses. This failure occurs in large part because we continue to examine single items in the problematique without understanding the whole is more than the sum of its parts, that change in one element means change in the others.

The book focuses on five interrelated factors, including: industrialization, population, food supply, resource usage and pollution. Essentially, the book makes the case that the world is finite and therefore the prevailing exponential growth of any of these entities is unsustainable and therefore must reach a limit.

To better understand the dynamic system that is our world, a computer model was designed by Jay W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study these five factors and to project their trends into the future. A description of the model, as well as the outputs of this model under varying parameters, form a part of this book. This work resulted in three conclusions. Firstly, if the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue, the planet’s limits to growth will be reached sometime in the next 100 years. The authors add that “the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”

The predicted sudden decline of both population and industrial capacity is obviously not yet apparent. Still, an examination of the computer model’s projections, in graphical form, help show the reasons behind this alarming conclusion.

This, part of The Limits to Growth’s figure 36, would appear to best represent the world’s dynamics. Although only the dates 1900 and 2100 are shown, the population curve indicates a linear time scale. The actual populations in1970 and 2000 are shown. 

To test the model assumption about available resources, we doubled the resource reserves in 1900, keeping all other assumptions identical to those in the standard run. Now industrialization can reach a higher level since resources are not so quickly depleted. The larger industrial plant releases pollution at such a rate, however, that the environmental pollution absorption mechanisms become saturated. Pollution rises very rapidly, causing an immediate increase in the death rate and a decline in food production.

The rise in the death rate, the decline in population and industrial capacity follow, within a few decades, a dramatic drop in food production per person. Food production and consumption are unequally distributed among the different areas of the world. Many people in the developing world die of starvation or the effects of malnutrition, many others live on a subsistence diet. The limits of food production are approached in much of the world.

The industrialized nations are approaching a different limit to growth, easily obtained energy, and are reacting to this problem, in part, by producing bio-fuels, fuels from agriculture. If this trend of diverting food from human consumption continues it will have to be offset by an increase in the production of foods, as the The Limits to Growth explains:

...food production is increased by growth of capital, more capital requires more resources, discarded resources become pollution, pollution interferes with the growth of population and food.

That is, to increase food production, more land must be cleared, more fertilizer must be used, more irrigation is necessary and/or the level of mechanization must rise, all of which require capital and create pollution.

The production of bio-fuels is a technical response to a problem resulting from an approach to a resource limit:

Since the recent history of a large part of human society has been so continuously successful, it is quite natural that many people expect technological breakthroughs to go on raising physical ceiling indefinitely.

But again, Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem – the problem of growth in a finite system – and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.

Besides producing biofuels here in Alberta, we are at the same time developing the oil sands as rapidly as possible, again in an attempt to offset the decline of our hydrocarbon production. This rapid development, at a high cost of both resources and capital, produces green house gases in order to produce a product that, when consumed, produces green house gases. The global village has become very small and what we do here has long lasting global consequences. The current rise in food prices, caused in part by diverting food to the production of bio- fuels, is already producing hardship in the less developed countries. All greenhouse gases produced here reach every part of our earth. Thus, technology offsets the problem, caused by the depletion of finite resources, creates other problems, but ultimately does not solve the problem of attempted limitless growth in this one particular finite system.

The Limits to Growth proposes a different and radical solution – self-imposed limits to growth – and terms a state with such limits as, “The Equilibrium State” in which ...population and capital are essentially stable, and the forces tending to increase or decrease them in a carefully controlled balance.

Since the industrial revolution, the focus has been on economic growth; it is a mantra that both nations and individuals must continuously become richer and richer and this, to the extent that a non-growing economy is labeled as stagnant or recessive. The largest obstacle to self-imposed limits to growth will be to overcome this mind set, to convince people and their leaders that a stable economy, in equilibrium, is a desirable prospect.

The Limits to Growth arrives at three conclusions. The first was that if present trends are allowed to continue unrestricted, an abrupt decrease in the near future of both population and industrial capacity.

The second is: It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.

And lastly: If the worlds people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.

The world’s options are limited. We could, as Stephen Hawkins suggested, attempt to colonize another world, or we can continue our laissez-faire attitude and have our destiny imposed on us. Or finally we could, as The Limits to Growth proposes, modify our lifestyles and our very philosophy in order to provide future generations with a habitable planet and a continued balanced existence.

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