When LIMITS TO GROWTH was published by the Club of Rome in 1972,
it provoked a firestorm of controversy. LTG was quickly attacked by
economists of the day. Although, some resorted to outright lies in
attempting to discredit the models [1], I suspect that most simply didn't
understand them. The conclusions of the LTG team were:
--
1. If the present growth trends in world population,
industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource
depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet
will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most
probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline
in both population and industrial capacity.
2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a
condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable
far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be
designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth
are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize
his individual human potential.
3. If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome
rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it,
the greater will be their chances of success. [pp. 23-24,
LIMITS TO GROWTH, Meadows et. al, 1972]
--
In LETHAL MODEL 2: The Limits to Growth Revisited, William Nordhouse
either didn't read or didn't understand Limits to Growth. Although the LTG
models projected "accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth,
widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a
deteriorating environment" , Nordhouse thought the book was about
limits to "economic growth":
"Two decades ago, a ferocious debate erupted about the feasibility and
desirability of future economic growth. The popular imagination was
captured by a study of the world economy known as The Limits to Growth.
This work, sponsored by the mysterious-sounding Club of Rome, convinced
many that unfettered economic growth had come to an end and that the
world was entering the 'era of limits.'
"The emergence of the anti-growth school was the latest peak in a long
intellectual cycle of pessimism about economic growth that originated
with Reverend T.R. Malthus in the early 1800s. But such concerns
receded from the public consciousness in the 1970s and early 1980s as
the immediacy of skyrocketing oil prices, a growing international debt
crisis, mounting fiscal imbalances, and slowing productivity and real
wage growth displaced vaguer long-term anxieties about declining
resources and growing entropy." [p. 1]
Having misunderstood (or misrepresented) both Malthus and the entire
LTG debate, Nordhouse finds no "theoretical" limits to economic growth
and looks to past economic growth for evidence of economic limits:
"Ultimately, then, the debate about future of economic growth is an
empirical one, and resolving the debate will require analysts to examine
fundamental structural parameters of the economy. Several critical
issues must be examined. How large are the drags from natural resources
and land? What is the quantitative relationship between technological
change and the resource-land drag? How does human population growth
behave as incomes rise? How much substitution is possible between labor
and capital on the one hand, and scarce natural resources, land, and
pollution abatement on the other? These are empirical questions that
cannot be settled solely by theorizing." [p. 16]
I have more of Nordhouse's paper and more of the original Limits to
Growth material in the footnotes at: http://dieoff.com/page168.htm
References and notes:
[1] The Economist in PLENTY OF GLOOM,12/20/97.
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20-12-97/xm0002.html
"In 1972 the Club of Rome published a highly influential report called
'Limits to Growth'. To many in the environmental movement, that report still
stands as a beacon of sense in the foolish world of economics. But were its
predictions borne out?
"'Limits to Growth' said total global oil reserves amounted to 550 billion
barrels. 'We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire
world by the end of the next decade,' said President Jimmy Carter shortly
afterwards. Sure enough, between 1970 and 1990 the world used 600 billion
barrels of oil. So, according to the Club of Rome, reserves should have been
overdrawn by 50 billion barrels by 1990. In fact, by 1990 unexploited
reserves amounted to 900 billion barrels -- not counting the tar shales, of
which a single deposit in Alberta contains more than 550 billion barrels."
But the Economist is simply wrong! In fact, the Club of Rome allowed for a
500% increase in "reserves". See http://www.dieoff.com/LimitsToGrowth.htm
Moreover, global oil production is now expected to "peak" in about five
years, see: THE END OF CHEAP OIL by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H.
