Four decades ago, the Club of Rome predicted looming economic collapse in its iconic ‘Limits to Growth’ report. An update of the analysis sees much the same picture.      

   

Hyrdopower turbines: the world needs immediate change to its energy systems to ensure sustainable growth, say economists.Credit: Construction Photography/Photoshot

On the eve of one the twentieth century’s most notable economic shocks — the 1973 oil crisis — an influential group of researchers released a now-iconic report entitled ‘The Limits to Growth’.

The work, which received wide attention and proved controversial, painted a bleak picture of humanity’s future. Left unchecked, it said, economic and population growth would deplete the planet’s resources and cause economic collapse before 2070.

More than four decades later, the report’s main conclusions are still valid, according to a group of independent researchers who have updated the work using more sophisticated analytical tools. Like the 1972 report, the latest work was commissioned by the Club of Rome, a group of liberal scientists, economists and politicians that this year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 1968.

The update, released on 17 October in Rome for the club’s anniversary, makes for a sobering read. Although its conclusions are not quite as drastic, humanity, it says, finds itself in something of a catch-22.

Business-as-usual or accelerated economic growth scenarios will mean the world will not be able to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) — a suite of social, environmental and prosperity targets for 2030 — the authors conclude. And even if governments were to substantially strengthen ‘conventional’ policies to meet social goals — such as the eradication of poverty and hunger and achieving quality education for all — they risk missing environmental goals.

"There is high risk for pushing the Earth’s life-supporting systems beyond irreversible trigger-points by 2050," the report concludes.

"It is quite disturbing to see that we’re still facing the same dilemma the Club of Rome described almost 50 years ago," says Julia Steinberger, an expert in ecological economics at the University of Leeds in the UK.

The original report was a quantitative analysis based on a computer model that calculated likely future outcomes of the world’s economy. Criticism focused mainly on the authors’ assumptions about the expected duration of natural resources.

Some economists called the book’s pessimistic conclusions "irresponsible nonsense", while others criticized the validity of the model — World3, sophisticated at the time — that the authors had used to predict energy consumption, pollution and population growth.

The latest version of the report — by researchers with the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden and the Norwegian Business School in Oslo — used an Earth-system model that combines socio-economic and biophysical variables, alongside a wealth of historic and new socio-economic data, to draw up their conclusions.

This model, whose elements interact with the passage of time, is much more robust, says Steinberger.

The researchers found that, on its current path, the world is on track of achieving only 10 of the 17 SDGs by 2030. Efforts to satisfy social SDGs with conventional policy tools come at the price of unsustainable or wasteful use of natural resources such as water, land and energy. Hence, environmental goals, including stabilizing climate, reducing pollution and maintaining biodiversity, threaten to fall by the wayside, they say.

To prevent human civilization from more environmental damage than it might be able to endure, the authors call on world leaders to consider more policies they deem unconventional.

Only more extreme economic and behavioural changes than are currently being enacted will allow the world to achieve all 17 SDGs together, the authors say.

These policies might include immediate transformation of energy systems, greater use of family planning to stabilize populations and actively encouraging more-even distribution of wealth so that the richest 10% take no more than 40% of income.

The report is a vindication of the Club of Rome’s initial world view and a welcome alternative to mainstream economics’ focus on growth and equilibrium, says Steinberger.

"Most of the ‘Limits to Growth’s’ original conclusions still hold true," Johan Rockström, a Stockholm-based sustainability researcher and report co-author said at its release. "This is scientifically satisfactory, but for societies it’s not."

              

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Spotlight| 17 OCT 18

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

News| 08 OCT 18

                                                                                                                 

Correspondence| 03 OCT 18