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