A 28 page Synopsis of the Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is online here
The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update claims signs are everywhere around us [that the world is in overshoot of carrying capacity]:
• Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is decreasing in summer.
• In 1998 more than 45 percent of the globe's people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. Meanwhile, the richest one-fifth of the world's population has 85 percent of the global GNP. And the gap between rich and poor is widening.
NBF Note - Brookings Institute analysis of poverty has better numbers than the World Bank. Brookings institute indicated the 2015 the extreme poverty should be down to 10% or less of the world's population. Down from 47 per cent in 1990 and 24 percent in 2008. It seems that a goal of getting extreme poverty down below 5% is easily possible for 2025. This would leave about 350 million people living with less than $1.25/day mainly in Africa. Nigeria is actually doing pretty well economically and is expected to account for 90-100 million of the extremely poor in 2015. If Nigeria continues to do well then they could make a lot of progress against poverty by 2020. A reachable positive scenario is to have less than 200 million living with less than $1.25/day. An extreme poverty rate of 2.5%.
• In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimated that 75 percent of the world's oceanic fisheries were fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery, fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed, and the species may have been pushed to biological extinction.
NBF Note - fish farming produced 66.5 million tons of fish in 2012.
• The first global assessment of soil loss, based on studies of hundreds of experts, found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.
• Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period 1990–2001
So the 30 year update is saying that we are already in population and resource usage overshoot.
As in the original Limits to Growth, there a few paragraphs or pages where the researchers leave themselves an out by claiming that their model is imperfect and is not a prediction but then go on to hundreds of pages of doomer claims.
As noted at reason.com
The study was based on a computer model developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and designed "to investigate five major trends of global concern—accelerating industrial development, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment." The goal was to use the model to explore the increasingly dire "predicament of mankind." The researchers modestly acknowledged that their model was "like every other model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished."
Yet even with this caveat, the MIT researchers concluded, "If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years." With considerable understatement, they added, "The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity." In other words: a massive population crash in a starving, polluted, depleted world.
The standard run is showing that collapse happens starting in 2020 / 2030 and is clearly happening by 2050.
Read more »published on Next Big Future // visit site
The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update claims signs are everywhere around us [that the world is in overshoot of carrying capacity]:
• Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is decreasing in summer.
• In 1998 more than 45 percent of the globe's people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. Meanwhile, the richest one-fifth of the world's population has 85 percent of the global GNP. And the gap between rich and poor is widening.
NBF Note - Brookings Institute analysis of poverty has better numbers than the World Bank. Brookings institute indicated the 2015 the extreme poverty should be down to 10% or less of the world's population. Down from 47 per cent in 1990 and 24 percent in 2008. It seems that a goal of getting extreme poverty down below 5% is easily possible for 2025. This would leave about 350 million people living with less than $1.25/day mainly in Africa. Nigeria is actually doing pretty well economically and is expected to account for 90-100 million of the extremely poor in 2015. If Nigeria continues to do well then they could make a lot of progress against poverty by 2020. A reachable positive scenario is to have less than 200 million living with less than $1.25/day. An extreme poverty rate of 2.5%.
• In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimated that 75 percent of the world's oceanic fisheries were fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery, fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed, and the species may have been pushed to biological extinction.
NBF Note - fish farming produced 66.5 million tons of fish in 2012.
• The first global assessment of soil loss, based on studies of hundreds of experts, found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.
• Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period 1990–2001
So the 30 year update is saying that we are already in population and resource usage overshoot.
As in the original Limits to Growth, there a few paragraphs or pages where the researchers leave themselves an out by claiming that their model is imperfect and is not a prediction but then go on to hundreds of pages of doomer claims.
As noted at reason.com
The study was based on a computer model developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and designed "to investigate five major trends of global concern—accelerating industrial development, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment." The goal was to use the model to explore the increasingly dire "predicament of mankind." The researchers modestly acknowledged that their model was "like every other model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished."
Yet even with this caveat, the MIT researchers concluded, "If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years." With considerable understatement, they added, "The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity." In other words: a massive population crash in a starving, polluted, depleted world.
The standard run is showing that collapse happens starting in 2020 / 2030 and is clearly happening by 2050.
Read more »published on Next Big Future // visit site
