Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse
Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon
Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander
The Guardian, 1 September 2014
The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.
It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.
ROBERT STEELE: They did indeed get the trend lines right, they got everything else wrong.
Most significantly, they assumed that top-down government leadership was the way to address the limits. The LOSING competing proposition that the Club of Rome did NOT choose focused instead on educating the public for the long term, ensuring that the intelligence was at the grass roots level such that daily incremental decisions by individuals and groups within the public were favorable to the future of the Earth.
They also completely missed bio-mimicry, bio-design and all that other excellent stuff that Melissa Sterry and a handful of others are focusing on, as well as true cost economics and open source everything and holistic analytics, the tri-fecta I focus on.
Missing today is an Open Source Everything Innovation Hub or an Institute for Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance that helps achieve engineering intelligence (open source everything), supply intelligence (true cost economics), and demand intelligence (holistic analytics). I am personally interested in hearing from any major university that might wish to not only sponsor this as a central node, but very rapidly engage with “mirrors” in each of the BRICS countries and elsewhere.
See Also:
Limits to Growth @ Phi Beta Iota
True Cost Economics @ Phi Beta Iota
