Bernard J. Wood, et al., opine that in writing an editorial for this issue on mineral resources, he was immediately reminded of The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), a book that he read avidly from cover to cover as a young post-doc. For anybody interested in humanity’s effect on the environment and its near-term consequences, it is still a fascinating read. The authors summarized a computer model of the likely effects of sustained economic growth on the Earth and the human population. Based on historical data from 1900 to 1970, they observed exponential growth in total human population, resource consumption, food consumption, industrialization and environmental pollution.
The Limits to Growth has been subject to intense scrutiny and criticism since its publication. By allowing consumption to increase exponentially but with fixed or slowly increasing resource availability, the authors ensured that the system would collapse at some point. Furthermore, it has been argued that the authors made insufficient allowance for technical innovation. Some of the detail (such as the GNP per capita of China) has been invalidated by political and technological changes. Nevertheless, as shown in a recent study (Turner 2014), many of the projections made by Meadows et al. (1972) were remarkably accurate.
In one scenario, Meadows et al. (1972) assumed unlimited resources and that a low-CO2–producing energy source replaced fossil fuels. But, this still led to collapse of the system because of pollution. Meadows et al. (1972) then added strict pollution controls with the assumption that pollution per unit of industrial output declines to 25% of its level in 1970. In this new scenario, population and industrial output per person rise well beyond their peak values in the standard model but the system again collapses well before 2100 because capital is diverted from industrial output into food production, and the population declines as food per capita becomes inadequate. So how do we avoid collapse of the global system?
Meadows et al. (1972) explored the parameters required for global sustainability and equilibrium. This required them to set birth rate equal to death rate with globally available birth control, and to limit the growth in industrial output by shifting societal values away from material goods towards education and services. Pollution and resource consumption also needed to be reduced to one-quarter of the 1970 values per unit of industrial output, and capital be diverted to food production, even where it is not financially profitable. Clearly, there has been little progress towards such a system. One can argue that our current political structures and values are inconsistent with changes in these directions. Nevertheless, The Limits to Growth has had enormous political influence, not least here in Europe, and was the stimulus for much of the environmental movement in Europe...like the Rachel Carlson's book Silent Spring had in the U.S.
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