The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book
modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite
resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Its
authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used
the World3 model to
simulate[1] the consequence of interactions between the Earth's and human
systems. The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798).Five variables were examined in
the original model, on the assumptions that exponential growth accurately
described their patterns of increase, and that the ability of technology to
increase the availability of resources grows only linearly. These variables are:
world population, industrialization, pollution, food
production and resource depletion. The authors intended to explore the
possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering
growth trends among the five variables. The most recent updated version was
published on June 1, 2004 by Chelsea Green Publishing
Company and Earthscan under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Donnella
Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have
updated and expanded the original version. They had previously published Beyond the Limits in 1993 as a 20
year update on the original material.[2][3][4]In 2008 Graham Turner at the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in
Australia published a paper called "A Comparison of `The
Limits to Growth` with Thirty Years of Reality".[5][6] It examined the
past thirty years of reality with the predictions made in 1972 and found that
changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the
book's predictions of economic and societal collapse in the 21st century.[7]
Limits to Growth