A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace.
Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says “the world is on track for disaster” and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, “The Limits to Growth.“
Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study’s researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages.
Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without “drastic measures for environmental protection,” the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.
However, the study said “unlimited economic growth” is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint.
The Smithsonian notes that several experts strongly objected to “The Limit of Growth’s” findings, including the late Yale economist Henry Wallich, who for 12 years served as a governor of the Federal Research Board and was its chief international economics expert. At the time, Wallich said attempting to regulate economic growth would be equal to “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”
Turner says that perhaps the most startling find from the study is that the results of the computer scenarios were nearly identical to those predicted in similar computer scenarios used as the basis for “The Limits to Growth.”
“There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” Turner said. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.”
Read the rest here.
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This is what happens when you write a computer model with 10,000 inputs and hit “compute.”
I wonder what the input for technological innovation looked like? You know, technological innovation like unlocking a possible 9000 year supply of methane hydrate to power us forever.
Reminds me of the quote: “With four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
John von Neumann
Yep.
Don’t worry, their predictions have quantiles at like 30 sigma.
These people have been claiming we’d exceed the Earth’s capacity to hold man since we first grew to 1 billion. I probably guess earlier than that, actually, if I were more adventurous…
I didn’t know they made time machines that could go that far in the future.
That should give skynet JUST enough time to take over before it all collapses