The new limits to growth

Let us venture into a political no-go zone and say that, at some point in the not too distant future, there is a bitter pill that we will need to swallow — and we are getting just a foretaste with the current energy crisis. In a nutshell, our global growth-based economic model is fundamentally unsustainable.

This is not a new idea — it dates back to the early 1970s. At that time there was much debate around energy and sustainability, coupled with a search for alternatives. One seminal work published in 1972 was The Limits to Growth, commissioned by The Club of Rome.


It was a prophetic piece based on early computer modelling that linked population growth, energy consumption, natural resource usage, food production, industrial output and life expectancy. The authors, an eminent group of highly respected scientists from the Systems Analysis Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed a number of future scenarios based on optimistic as well as pessimistic assumptions.

The work was a warning to governments and decision-makers to start changing course because the Earth’s resources could not indefinitely sustain the patterns of growth that are a consequence of our current economic paradigm. The report has been dismissed by mainstream economists because of its Malthusian undertone — which modern agriculture had “disproved”. Yet it is the underlying logic of the report that ought to give us much to contemplate in a sober and rational manner.

Mail & Guardian