The book "Limits to Growth," published in 1972, was designed to publicize the findings of an MIT study funded by a group of European industrialists known as the Club of Rome. Was this MIT collapse study correct?
(This is Part Two of our series on the Club of Rome predictions. Bruce Nappi, a long-time Job One for Humanity volunteer and a former Sandia National Lab and U. California Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist, wrote it.)
These leaders, many of whom were from the auto industry, were already encountering natural resource limits that impacted auto production. The goal of the study was to anticipate and address serious future production problems.
The observations made by the book, with the support of the U.N., were initially taken seriously by most major companies worldwide. Plans were developed and about to be enacted. The one significant country that did not go along was the U.S. Instead, the U.S. government, academia, and highly impacted companies, led by the carbon fuel industry, launched an effort to heavily discredit the program. They used the same approach and consulting firms that discredited the claims of tobacco and asbestos links to cancer. These same firms, and their approaches, with huge funding from the carbon industry, are currently a major force working to discredit scientific findings about global warming and climate change.
In the early 1970s, a significant scientific study was conducted that addressed the viability of infinite growth in the human population and the economy. The study concluded that these ongoing assumptions were not viable in the long term. In fact, the study realized that severe repercussions for the entirety of world society were inevitable in a relatively short time if major adjustments were not made immediately.
The world failed to make any of the recommended adjustments. In fact, most governments and societies took action to mitigate the worst-case scenarios that the model anticipated. Therefore, it is now expected that the impacts shown in the models will occur, they will be worse than what the models showed, and will occur sooner than shown.
Because of the continued discrediting of the study outcomes, people newly discovering the book or those who have been misled by the discrediting efforts often ask, “Has anyone rerun that study to determine if its models still hold true using the latest information?” The answer is, yes! As the original study foresaw, the current repeats of the study show that the anticipated impacts will be greater and the timetable shorter. For example, the peak in world population is now anticipated to occur around 2026, not sometime in the 2070s, as suggested by the 1970 models. These studies, in addition to one conducted by the original MIT group in 2004, have been run by reputable groups with no conflicts of interest in their predicted outcomes. Three such studies are: 1. Professor Graham Turner at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, 2014; 2. Gaya Herrington, KPMG Global, one of the world’s “Big Four” accounting firms, 2021; and 3. Professor Ugo Bardi, department of physical chemistry, University of Florence, 2022. A summary of key observations from each of the four studies (including MIT) is presented here. Each of these studies is available to the public, as listed in the reference section.
MIT Club of Rome team - 2004 Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (1)
Signs that were suggested by the original study are everywhere around us:
· Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice are decreasing in summer.
· In 1998, more than 45 percent of the globe’s people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. Meanwhile, the richest one-fifth of the world’s population accounts for 85 percent of the global GDP. The gap between rich and poor is widening.
· In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimated that 75 percent of the world’s oceanic fisheries were being fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery, fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed.
· The first global assessment of soil loss found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.
· Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period 1990–2001.
· Per capita grain production peaked in 1985 and has been trending down slowly ever since.
These are symptoms of a world in overshoot. We are drawing on the world’s resources faster than they can be restored. We are releasing wastes and pollutants faster than the Earth can absorb them or render them harmless.
In 1972, the world’s population and economy were still comfortably within the planet’s carrying capacity. The study found that there was still room to grow safely if major changes were initiated. By 1992, this was no longer true. The 20-year. Revision to Limits to Growth was subtitled Beyond the Limits. By 2002, the world was “dangerously in a state of overshoot.
The recommendations in this update, based on a belief that world leaders could never be so blind as to ignore these warnings, were almost completely ignored.
Melbourne study - 2014 (2)
“The Limits to Growth “standard run (or business-as-usual model) scenario, produced about forty years ago, aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper.” The Melbourne study highlights the following points: (Note, even these points, made in 2014, were overly optimistic about how events would unfold.)
· The global population will therefore fall, at about half a billion per decade, starting at about 2030.
· The average living standards for the aggregate population (material wealth, food, and services per capita) will fall back to those of the early 20th century.
· The levels of pollution, natural resources, per capita industrial output, birth rates, death rates, and population growth have very accurately followed the original 1972 models, with the generalization that they all occur earlier.
· A primary indicator that world leaders and many analysts fail to understand is the interacting feedback dynamics of the depletion of natural resources. Resources available for common social needs will, of course, continue to decrease. The rate of this decrease, however, will grow much faster than traditional usage. This happens because larger and larger amounts of those resources need to be diverted to mine and harvest them as they become increasingly difficult to obtain.
· A prime example is the extraction of “oil” itself. While new reserves continue to be discovered, the energy required to extract and process the oil is significantly higher than what has already been used, resulting in a higher CO2 production per barrel.
· A second compounding factor is that the new extraction machinery needed to get the oil steals critical resources from other needs. For example, chromium is required to produce the specialty steel needed, thereby hastening its depletion.
· What major economic analysts and governments will not admit is that the continually increasing inflation and the Global Financial Crisis are related to this growing worldwide inefficiency of extracting all natural resources.
· The Melbourne study repeatedly emphasizes that the time to start action was in 1972 when the original report came out. The reason is that the Limits to Growth models showed that many resource depletions had already started at that time.
· It is notable that there does not appear to be any other economy-environment models that have demonstrated such comprehensive and long-term data agreement.
· Based on currently observed data, it would appear that the global economy and population are on the cusp of collapse. (Remember, this statement was made in 2014.)
The Melbourne study did not only focus on rerunning the Club of Rome computer models with up-to-date data. It also reviewed many of the academic papers that have discredited the 1972 MIT study since its publication. In each case, the Melbourne analysis showed, using now available data, that each of these discrediting studies was flawed and how it was flawed.
KPMG Study (3)
In 2021, the KPMG Group, one of the “top four” accounting firms in the world, conducted a review of the history of the Club or Rome effort since 1972. KPMG was aware that “Empirical data comparisons since then indicated that the world was still heading for collapse.” The KPMG's objectives were to examine whether this was still the case based on the most recent data, and whether there was opportunity left to change that trajectory.” While not stated in the report, it is obvious that this research was being requested by some of the most prominent institutions in the world, who are their clients.
Because of its prominent world status, KPMG was able to obtain the latest and most reliable data from academia, non-government agencies, United Nations entities, and the World Bank.” Their overall assessment was:
“The scenarios aligned closely with observed global data, which is a testament to the LtG work done decades ago. The two scenarios that align most closely indicate a halt in growth over the next decade or so, which raises questions about the viability of continuous growth as humanity’s goal in the 21st century. Both scenarios also indicate subsequent declines, but only one—the scenario in which declines are caused by pollution, including greenhouse gas pollution—depicts a collapse pattern.”
“This suggests that it’s almost, but not yet, too late for society to change course.”
The KPMG report then went into great detail about the disinformation effort that stopped the initial positive world-wide response.
Ugo Bardi Limits and Beyond 2022 (4)
This book is a collection of essays. The essays are from prominent people who are very familiar with: 1. the original Club of Rome study; 2. how the world failed to understand and respond to the study; and 3. what the original study still has to tell us. Regarding the main question posed by the article, yes, they all agree that the original study accurately predicted how world society would unfold. They also clarify a primary goal of the study: to develop a model that shows society how to build a sustainable world.
The model remains fully capable of performing this task. However, the objective of “sustainability” does not guarantee that humanity can set any standards of living it wants. All that can be achieved is a “sustainable solution” consistent with the parameters of current conditions.
The original study made an initial assumption that all people in the world would achieve a “level of well-being” roughly equivalent to that of the lower-income nations of Europe in 1972. For most people, both then and now, this would be a sobering realization. Since world action was not initiated when the alarm was first raised in 1972, current parameters have severely degraded from the ideals that were still achievable in 1972. That is, many wishes most of humanity had for a “reasonable” quality of life in 1972 have been lost to the average person alive today and for centuries to come.
Conclusion
This article focuses on demonstrating that the original Club of Rome study and the 1972 book, Limits to Growth, which summarized the study, have repeatedly proven to be remarkably accurate. When the original computer model is adjusted for actual current conditions, the accuracy is further improved. Unfortunately, the overall variable projections showing the collapse of society are still supported, but are expected to occur sooner and with more severity. This support for the accuracy of that effort needs to be made clear, as the forces in industry, government, and academia that attempted to discredit the report falsely are still active.
Unfortunately, even among environmental and resource preservation activist groups, another deception is common. Society will repeatedly see statements like, “it is not too late to take action”. This claim, while narrowly true, is deceiving because it hides a broader picture. The claim is being made to increase or maintain the group’s membership and continue their revenue streams. What is being hidden is the significant amount of loss that has already accrued, which cannot be easily undone, or undone at all, or undone without a substantial social impact. It is hiding the irresponsibility and incompetence that society has allowed to accumulate in almost all of our major social institutions.
A distressing corollary to the Limits and Beyond observations is that, unless humanity acknowledges its failure to act, and drastically adjusts its current and future life models, the quality of life that can still be achieved will continue to get drastically worse. Most people in the world are not equipped to face such a future.
Denial will be a common psychological response. This will further negatively compound the response. Only those who take prudent steps and prepare with reasonable goals will be able to avoid the worst conditions.
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References
1. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, 2004 (written by the original authors)
https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X/
2. Is Global Collapse Imminent?: Turner, G. 2014 ‘Is Global Collapse Imminent?’, MSSI Research Paper No. 4, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne
3. KPMG Accounting firm 2021 study, Gaya Herrington
https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/yale-publication.pdf
4. Limits and Beyond: 50 years on from The Limits to Growth, what did we learn and what’s next? 2022 Ugo Bardi https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Revisited-SpringerBriefs-Energy/dp/1441994157
Find out if, 50 years ago, the Club of Rome/MIT study was dead right about a coming global collapse. Remember to read parts one and three of our global collapse series.
You can find part 3 here. (Part three is the best in most people's consideration of all three article articles as it puts everything together.)
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