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CSIRO paper: A comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality
Graham M Turner, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia via RePEc
In 1972, the Club of Rome’s infamous report “The Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al., 1972) presented some challenging scenarios for global sustainability, based on a system dynamics computer model to simulate the interactions of five global economic subsystems, namely: population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources.
Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century. This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970-2000 with scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth.
The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the “standard run” scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century.
The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies. The results indicate the particular importance of understanding and controlling global pollution.
(June 2008)
Paper is downloadable in PDF, HTML and other formats.
Suggested by geneticist and EB contributor Michael Lardelli, who adds, “Very important paper.”
Is California on the brink of environmental collapse?
Rachel Olivieri, AlterNet
California has spared no expense to taxpayers or natural ecosystems to become the most hydrologically altered landmass on the planet.
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There is no landmass on Earth quite like California. Here one finds the world’s most ancient trees, bristlecone pines, more than 4,700 years old, in the White Mountains; the tallest and largest trees, the coast redwood and giant sequoia, respectively; the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Whitney; the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere, Death Valley; the largest western hemisphere estuary, the Bay Delta; an 800-mile coastline; the most irrigated acres; the most endangered species in the U.S.; the most diverse geology and biodiversity in the U.S.; and the greatest, most ecologically destructive water projects on Earth.
California has spared no expense to either taxpayers or natural ecosystems to attain its status as the most hydrologically altered landmass on the planet. It would surprise few that California was built on gold, greed, extraction, depletion, extinction, dubiously acquired large-landed semi-desert agricultural empires, well-gifted railroad land grants fueling speculative growth, and highly subsidized stolen water — all comprising a tunnel vision for overextended populations and infinite growth in a world utterly finite.
… Without considering global warming, a century from now all man-made reservoirs that are not full of silt will nonetheless have lost their operational capacities to support agriculture, prevent floods, and serve human population centers. The moment they were filled, the concrete’s limited lifespan began its 50- to 100-year process of degeneration. Where’s the future?
This narrative represents a very short list of human events upon the landscape. The visible consequence of California’s altered watersheds and landscapes translate into today’s deepening water scarcity.
… This 20th-century hydrologic model laid the foundation for the infrastructure of 1,400 dams and reservoir systems providing water storage and flood protection for California. The 21st century will provide an altogether different climate model, and water management policies and structures will have to change dramatically if the state’s population is to survive that challenge.
The greatest challenge for water managers in today’s weather system is timing the flows from the Sierra snowmelt.
… The real solution, backing off the right wall, reducing and relocating vulnerable population centers, reducing consumer demand, developing local water sustainability, and restoring watersheds is simply unthinkable — and the unthinkable is the only solution – and real solutions are not found when one cannot even define the problem.
(4 September 2008)
I think this article is a harbinger of a new approach – examining a region in its totality, including its geography and water supplies. Peak oil tends to focus on one commodity in the abstract. The specifics of how peak oil will play out will be highly dependent on the specific region. -BA
The machine in our heads
Glen Parton, Speaking Truth to Power
The environmental crisis consists of the deterioration and outright destruction of micro and macro ecosystems worldwide, entailing the elimination of countless numbers of wild creatures from the air, land, and sea, with many species being pushed to the brink of extinction, and into extinction. People who passively allow this to happen, not to mention those who actively promote it for economic or other reasons, are already a good distance down the road to insanity.
Most people do not see, understand, or care very much about this catastrophe of the planet because they are overwhelmingly preoccupied with grave psychological problems. The environmental crisis is rooted in the psychological crisis of the modern individual. This makes the search for an eco-psychology crucial; we must understand better what terrible thing is happening to the modern human mind, why it is happening, and what can be done about it.
Deep Thinking
The solution to the global environmental crisis we face today depends far less on the dissemination of new information than it does on the re-emergence into consciousness of old ideas. Primitive ideas or tribal ideas, kinship, solidarity, community, direct democracy, diversity, harmony with nature provide the framework or foundation of any rational or sane society. Today, these primal ideas, gifts of our ancestral heritage, are blocked from entering consciousness. The vast majority of modern people cannot see the basic truths that our ancient ancestors knew and that we must know again, about living within the balance of nature. We are lost in endless political debates, scientific research, and compromises because what is self-evident to the primitive mind has been forgotten.
For hundreds of thousands of years, until the beginning of civilization about 10,000 years ago, humans lived in tribal societies, which produced tribal consciousness a set of workable ideas or guiding principles concerning living together successfully on a diverse and healthy planet. The invasion of civilization into one tribal locale after another, around the globe, has been so swift and deadly that we may speak of the trauma of civilization. Because tribal peoples were unprepared and unable to deal with the onslaught of civilization, tribal consciousness was driven underground, becoming something forbidden and dangerous. Conquered peoples became afraid to think and act according to the old ways, on pain of death. There is much fear that lies at the origin of civilization.
Continued at the original http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/650/1
(13 August 2008)
Published earlier at Tierra et Vida, Primitivism and Green Anarchist.
Suggested by Claude from Quebec, who writes:
This writing explains the resistance of people to the idea of peak oil and environmental catastophe. This is the best tool for profound social change.
