Limits to Growth - 1972. pdf can be found here
"Published 1972 – The message of this book still holds today: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. In the summer of 1970, an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a study of the implications of continued worldwide growth. They examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, ultimately limit growth on this planet-population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. The MIT team fed data on these five factors into a global computer model and then tested the behavior of the model under several sets of assumptions to determine alternative patterns for mankind’s future. The Limits to Growth is the nontechnical report of their findings. The book contains a message of hope, as well: Man can create a society in which he can live indefinitely on earth if he imposes limits on himself and his production of material goods to achieve a state of global equilibrium with population and production in carefully selected balance."
Breakdown of the climate has been predicted for years but we all climbed back under the bed clothes and pretended it didn't exist. We are just beginning to learn that actually our handling of the resources of this planet is slowly destroying it and the life that lives upon it. Who is the parasite? It is us the human race we may be clever but we are also selfish. We need our pleasures, our petrol guzzling cars, our planes to fly us to far away places. Every delicacy under the sun to whet our appetites. Someone has to pay for it, at the moment Pakistan, with a third of its land flooded. A thousand died, not much, but we all know that unless food and medicines are got there, the death rates will soar.
Will our media cover it, well yes the disaster side but it will slip out of the way similar to the starvation rates in Afghanistan. We are prepared to accept it in other countries because it isn't us. Well, maybe it will be eventually!
I don't know the answer, humans are basically selfish, they are survivalists and need the upward movement of wealth. But growth has to stop because in the end it will destroy us and that is where we stand at the moment, on the cusp of a disaster.
Cheerful thoughts for a Saturday. I haven't even moved my family to my way of thinking, Andrew and my daughter are off to Switzerland tomorrow!
A gentler note. Carn Alw, an Iron Age Fort I never managed to get to. But this dronescape takes you there to that wild landscape of the Presceli Hills.
Well said Thelma - anything goes as long as it doesn't affect us. I am just pleased I am not young now. But that is selfish too I suppose.
ReplyDeleteSaying it Pat is not changing it sadly. People need to act.
DeleteLike I said before (as has David Attenborough) there are just too many of us. What do you do about that? Things will have to sort themselves out. Us humans are always going on about maintaining the balance of nature when it is our sheer numbers upsetting it. Pigeons and seagulls taking over town centres are all to do with us.
ReplyDeleteYour argument being that we know the questions but not the answers. Limiting world population is not easy. Parts of the world practice birth control, some parts have falling birth rates like Japan. Disaster will sadly cull some of us, as did war of course, though this option seems less likely thank goodness. Mind you Putin is having a good go, starving us of grain and gas. What makes me cross though Tom is the acceptance of natural disaster in their lifetime with no one prepared to put up the fight.
DeleteWonderful to see Carn Alw from the drone. Thanks for sharing that footage. I see that the film was made this summer. As for life on this planet, I remain in despair. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
ReplyDeleteThe range of hills are a ridge, probably the trackway from Ireland to the South West. The muchly contested source of the bluestones at Stonehenge.
DeleteWhat became of the ozone hole? We humans cured acid rain.
ReplyDeleteIt shrnk because we did something about it Joanne, could well be that climate change is having money thrown at it now. There has definitely been some reduction of fossil fuel use.
DeleteLife is full of contradictions. I cannot give up my travel...or can I?
ReplyDeleteWell here the airlines are cutting back on flights Tabor, so I suppose it is up to all of us to make our own decisions.
Delete