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Limits to Growth was 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, Jørgen 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 Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1972 calendar). ...
The world population is the total number of humans alive on the planet Earth at a given time. ...
The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. ...
The World3 model was a computer simulation of interactions between population, industrial growth, food production and limits in the ecosystems of the Earth. ...
The Rev. ...
An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798. ...
The most recent updated version was published on June 1, 2004 by Chelsea Green Publishing Company 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. Limits to Growth was funded by the Xerox corportion, among other major corporations. Charles Kytle Associates, a public-relations firm, organized the press release and helped spread the media sensation [1]. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Dennis Meadows is an economist and co-author of Limits to Growth. ...
1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ...
Exponential reserve index
One key idea that the book Limits to Growth discusses is that if the rate of resource use is increasing, the amount of reserves cannot be calculated by simply taking the current known reserves and dividing by the current yearly usage, as is typically done to obtain a static index. For example, in 1972, the amount of chromium reserves was 775 million metric tons, of which 1.85 million metric tons were mined annually. (See exponential growth.) The static index is 775 / 1.85 = 418 years, but the rate of chromium consumption was growing at 2.6% annually (Limits to Growth, pp 54-71). If instead of assuming a constant rate of usage, the assumption of a constant rate of growth of 2.6% annually is made, the resource will instead last 93 years ( (note that the book rounded off numbers)). In mathematics, a quantity that grows exponentially (or geometrically) is one that grows at a rate proportional to its size. ...
In the book, they list quite a few of these exponential indices for both the current reserves, and for five times the current reserves:
| Resource | Static index | Growth rate | Exponential index | 5 times reserves exponential index | | Chromium | 420 | 2.6 | 95 | 154 | | Gold | 11 | 4.1 | 9 | 29 | | Iron | 240 | 1.8 | 93 | 173 | | Petroleum | 31 | 3.9 | 20 | 50 | The static reserve numbers assume that the usage is constant, and the exponential reserve assumes that the growth rate is constant. For petroleum, neither assumption was correct in the years that followed due to the OPEC's oil embargo, followed by a return to increasing production. Logo The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is made up of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela; since 1965, its international headquarters have been in Vienna, Austria. ...
This article is about the economic term. ...
The exponential index has often been misquoted, for example, The Skeptical Environmentalist states: "Limits to Growth showed us that we would have run out of oil before 1992" (page 121). What Limits to Growth actually has is the above table which has the current reserves (that is no new sources of oil are found) for oil running out in 1992 assuming constant exponential growth. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Danish: Verdens Sande Tilstand, literal translation: The Real State of the World) is a controversial book by political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, which argues that claims made about global warming, overpopulation, declining energy resources, deforestation, species loss, water shortages, and...
Criticism Limits to Growth attracted controversy as soon as it was published. Yale economist Henry C. Wallich labeled the book "a piece of irresponsible nonsense" in his March 13, 1972 Newsweek editorial. Wallich's main complaints are that the book was published as a publicity stunt with great fanfare at the Smithsonian in Washington, and that there was insufficient evidence for many of the variables used in the model. According to Wallich, "the quantitative content of the model comes from the authors' imagination, although they never reveal the equations that they used." Considering that the detailed model and Meadows et al justifications were not published until 1974 (two years after Limits to Growth) in the book Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World, Wallich's complaint about "the peculiar presentation of their work and by their unscientific procedures" has merit. The Newsweek logo Newsweek is a weekly news magazine published in New York City and distributed throughout the United States and internationally. ...
The Smithsonian castle, as seen through the garden gate. ...
Similar criticisms were made by others. Robert M. Solow from MIT, complained about the weak base of data on which Limits to Growth's predictions were made (Newsweek, March 13, 1972, page 103). Dr. Allen Kneese and Dr. Ronald Riker of Resources for the future stated "the authors load their case by letting some things grow exponentially and others not. Population, capital and pollution grow exponentially in all models, but technologies for expanding resources and controlling pollution are permitted to grow, if at all, only in discrete increments."(Newsweek, March 13, 1972, page 103) Robert Merton Solow (born August 23, 1924) is an American economist particularly known for his work on the theory of economic growth. ...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology. ...
Writing for the Michigan Law Review, Alex Kozinski, a Reagan-appointed judge, discussed Limits to Growth at length at the beginning of his review of The Skeptical Environmentalist, calling the authors 'a group of scientists going by the pretentious name “The Club of Rome”.' Judge Alex Kozinski Judge Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a popular essayist. ...
Famous people with the family name Reagan include: Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States Nancy Reagan, the wife of Ronald Reagan and influential First Lady Ron Reagan, President Reagans son and liberal journalist Michael Reagan, President Reagans son and conservative talk show host John Henninger...
Notes - ^ The models were run on Dynamo, a simulation programming language.
References - "To Grow or not to Grow", Newsweek, March 13, 1972, pages 102-103
- Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. (1972).
The Limits to Growth. New York: University Books. ISBN 0-87663-165-0 - Henry C. Wallich, "More on Growth", Newsweek, March 13, 1972, page 86.
ISBNs - ISBN 0-87663-165-0 1972 Edition
- ISBN 0-87663-222-3 1974 Second edition (cloth)
- ISBN 0-87663-918-X 1974 Second edition (paperback)
See also A cornucopian (derived from the word cornucopia; sometimes called an anti-Malthusian, from their opposition to the neo-Malthusians and the theories of Thomas Malthus) is one who holds any of a variety of views that are not in the ordinary sense simply optimistic about progress and confident in technological...
The twelve leverage points to intervene in a system were proposed by Donella Meadows. ...
Accumulated GDP growth for various countries. ...
An energy crisis is any great shortfall (or price rise) in the supply of energy resources to an economy. ...
// Energy development is the ongoing effort to provide abundant and accessible energy, through knowledge, skills and constructions. ...
The Hubbert peak theory, also known as peak oil, is an influential theory concerning the long-term rate of conventional oil (and other fossil fuel) extraction and depletion. ...
A Malthusian catastrophe, sometimes known as a Malthusian check, Malthusian crisis, Malthusian dilemma, Malthusian disaster or Malthusian trap, is a return to subsistence-level conditions as a result of agricultural (or, in later formulations, economic) production being eventually outstripped by growth in population. ...
Negative Population Growth is a membership organization in the United States, founded in 1972. ...
It has been suggested that Overpopulation Debate be merged into this article or section. ...
Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a Stanford University professor and a renowned entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies). ...
Population Connection is an organization in the United States, formerly known as Zero Population Growth. ...
System dynamics is one approach to modeling the dynamics of complex systems such as population, ecological and economic systems, which usually interact strongly with each other. ...
For the organization formerly known as Zero Population Growth, see Population Connection. ...
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