|
During the 1970s the Club of Rome made "The Limits to Growth" with the World3 model and, whatever it predicts, some scenarios like the Business As Usual (BAU) seems to have tracked quite well for ca. 50 years already. The latest check-up is by Gaya Branderhorst in 2020, https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37364868. Of course, one has to understand that such a model doesn't show you "on the year 2028 the population is size 16.2931 billion". That is not the point. The point is to show how something grows, or shrinks, and the interrelations of the tracked variables. As x goes higher, y starts to diminish and soon after z goes through the roof, that kind of thing. The collapse of, for example, industrial output levels might be a form of a Seneca cliff. That is, the growth of the industrial output becomes harder and harder to achieve, while the difficulties compound and actually keep on growing long after the growth of industrial output itself has stagnated or started to drop slightly. This will dramatically increase the inhibitory effect, thus creating a growth curve which starts to slow down and then drops fast ("collapse"). Why dismiss the model? The BAU scenario seems to reflect reality for over 50 years now, so is it not rational to try to understand it? The Limits to Growth is fundamentally a realization that the world has finite resources. It is not illogical to consider this as a truth. At some point there won't be new resources to obtain, and hence growth in systems based on capturing resources will simply slow down (and perhaps even drop fast, "collapse", because difficulties compound). Circular economy and recycling are good but they cannot expand the available resource pool of e.g. raw materials. |