Source: The Guardian
URL: N/A
Date: 06/03/1972
Event: Anthony Tucker: "on our present course the outcome can only be disaster"
Credit: The Guardian, also many thanks to Geoff Chambers for transcribing these
Scientists warn world of danger: Mar 6 1972
By ANTHONY TUCKER, Science Correspondent
A major analysis of world trends, commissioned by the Club of Rome and published in the United States today, shows that unless dramatic changes take place in economic and political policies civilisation will degrade and collapse within a century.
The study, carried out by an international team under the direction of Professor Denis Meadows at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to be published in this country at the end of the month, is based on the most complex computer model yet constructed of dominant interacting components of world systems. Its unavoidable conclusion is that economic and population growth must cease and be replaced by stable systems.
The study is the first phase of a project called the "Predicament of Mankind" which was started by the Club of Rome with help from the Volkswagen Foundation in 1970. It examines the five basic factors - population, agricultural production, natural resources, industrial production, and pollution - which determine the broad limits of growth.
It extrapolates rather than predicts but, as the authors point out, if you do not believe the extrapolations, then you are assuming that major changes will take place. There is no evidence that the necessary changes are taking place.
The Club of Rome, because it is an invisible and yet apparently powerful and industrially-orientated organisation, is regarded by some as sinister. Nothing could be farther from the truth, for its members share the common conviction that the problems facing the world are so complex, so imminently serious, and so bound up with traditional policies and institutions that existing governmental and industrial structures are unable to understand them, let alone cope with them.
It was founded by Dr Aurelio Peccei, who last year addressed a meeting of the Confederation of British Industry on this subject at a special meeting at the House of Commons, and includes among its members Professor Hugo Thiemann, director of the Battelle Institute, Dr Sabiro Okita, head of the Economic Research Centre, Tokyo, Dr Alexander King, scientific director of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, and about 60 other eminent social scientists, industrialists, and economists, none of whom holds political office.
Dr Peccei and Dr King are attending a meeting at Windsor which is to consider the limitations of the UN conference on the human environment to be held in Stockholm in June. The conveners, the Association of World Federalists, believe that the Stockholm conference, in spite of the careful preparations being made, is "likely to make a minimal and inadequate response to the environmental challenge now confronting mankind."
The Windsor discussions are being held in camera but may lead to a statement later this week.
Predicament of Man: Guardian: Mar 6 1972
ANTHONY TUCKER introduces exclusive extracts from a major analysis of world environmental trends published in America today.
Documents that may change the course of mankind are very rare. "The Limits to Growth" - a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind - is such a document. Published today in the United States by Potomac Associates and to be published in Britain on March 30 by Earth Island - a new publishing house concerned with major environmental issues - the report summarises the findings of an international team studying the major trends and interactions of human activity.
Under the direction of Professor Denis Meadows, and using computer techniques developed by Professor Jay Forrester, the team have assembled the best available information on a series of aspects of the worldwide situation which limit human possibility - including population, the availability of resources, industrial output, food production,and level of pollution. The information, and information of existing trends, have been built into a "model" of the world which, in major respects, must mirror the highly complex interactive system of the real world.
The enormous advantage of a carefully constructed computer model is that, unlike the human mind, it is capable of revealing the highly complex interactions which take place in a dynamic system which has many variables. The human mind can analyse, make value judgements, and determine policies, but it cannot encompass the interactions within a complex system. Yet an understanding of the world’s complex systems is essential before judgements can be made, and policies developed, to ensure that those very systems stand some chance of survival.
The model, which can be modified to demonstrate the effects of specific policy decisions - such as resources conservation or population control - shows all too clearly that on our present course the outcome can only be disaster. It needs to be emphasised that this is not a "prediction" in the sense that this must necessarily happen, but that if things are not changed, this must happen.
The dominant aspects of human society, characterised by an exponential growth of economies, population resources depletion and pollution, all have unknown but real physical limits in a finite world. More importantly in this context they are all interlinked in very subtle ways so that, without the aid of computer modelling, the overall effects of charges [sic] in one of these potential "variables" cannot be seen in world terms. It turns out, for example, that population control alone is not enough to ensure a stable world system, and that a massive attempt to control pollution within the expanding system would simply precipitate collapse.
What the report demonstrates, unequivocally, is that the kinds of growth now being experienced by human societies and encouraged with blind and committed enthusiasm by all Governments, is on the best available information a certain road to disaster. The kind of new policies suggested by the study as essential to stabilising world society are highly unpalatable and in many ways wholly alien to existing industrial and government philosophies and policies. It is an indication of the lack of human concern for future generations that this is the only deeply probing attempt so far made to achieve an understanding of the interactive outcome of human activity. And, as the study shows all too bleakly, the longer governments delay the introduction of radically altered policies, then the smaller is the chance of their success.
"The Limits to Growth" will be published by Earth Island, 17 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1V 7RL, on March 30, price £1.