Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial
environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for
disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited
perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s, The Limits to Growth. Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club
of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future
scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings
continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global
economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by
2030. However, the study also noted that unlimited economic growth was
possible, if governments forged policies and invested in technologies to
regulate the expansion of humanity’s ecological footprint.
Prominent economists disagreed with the report’s methodology and conclusions. Yale’s Henry Wallich opposed active intervention, declaring that limiting economic growth too soon would be “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”
Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 with the business-as-usual scenario. He found the predictions nearly matched the facts. “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” he says. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.”
