Anti-growth nonsense
Professor Phil Shane writes:
In 1972, Donella Meadows and a group of fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists used a then-powerful computer to generate a global systems model of human activity. Using decades of global data, and trying alternative scenarios, they reached a simple conclusion: “If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”
The work was published as the book Limits to Growth, which became a bestseller and was translated into many languages. Though widely dismissed in mainstream economics, subsequent analysis of the past 50 years of global data by independent researchers such as econometrician and sustainability researcher Gaya Herrington has shown the original study is robust.
It is not just dismissed by economists, but by reality. The book predicted a huge scarcity of resources, and that this would of course lead to massive price increases. It’s the same idea as peak oil. The Simon-Ehrlich wager in 1980 was on whether the prices of copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten would increase or decrease. The book would have you believe they would all increase. Here’s what happened:
- Nickel feel by 7%
- Copper fell by 18%
- Chromium fell. by 49%
- Tin fell by 55%
- Tungsten fell by 65%
This is what you call reality.
The good news is that our economy requiring constant growth to avoid collapse is a social construct and is not based on the biophysical reality. We could find an alternative. It is time for governments, education and communities to have an adult conversation about the future.
The notion of a world without economic growth appeals to rich privileged people. What it actually means is hundreds of millions not lifted from absolute poverty. There are countries in the world that don’t have economic growth. Their citizens are desperate to get out.