Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on April 5, 2012
MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030
Forty years after its initial publication, a study called The Limits to Growth is looking depressingly prescient. Commissioned by an international think tank called the Club of Rome, the 1972 report found that if civilization continued on its path toward increasing consumption, the global economy would collapse by 2030. Population losses would ensue, and things would generally fall apart.
The study was — and remains — nothing if not controversial, with economists doubting its predictions and decrying the notion of imposing limits on economic growth. Australian researcher Graham Turner has examined its assumptions in great detail during the past several years, and apparently his latest research falls in line with the report’s predictions, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The world is on track for disaster, the magazine says.
The study, initially completed at MIT, relied on several computer models of economic trends and estimated that if things didn’t change much, and humans continued to consume natural resources apace, the world would run out at some point. Oil will peak (some argue it has) before dropping down the other side of the bell curve, yet demand for food and services would only continue to rise. Turner says real-world data from 1970 to 2000 tracks with the study’s draconian predictions: “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here. We are not on a sustainable trajectory,” he tells Smithsonian.
Is this impossible to fix? No, according to both Turner and the original study. If governments enact stricter policies and technologies can be improved to reduce our environmental footprint, economic growth doesn’t have to become a market white dwarf, marching toward inevitable implosion. But just how to do that is another thing entirely.
10 Comments on "MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030"
DC on Thu, 5th Apr 2012 10:53 pm
The govt cant enact strict polices because there are no govts anymore, jut corporations. And they like things just as they are, so in that sense of the word, it will be impossible to ‘fix’. Of course, we could destroy the corproations and restore govt, but….not exeactly a small order is it..
jaime on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 1:09 am
and then when fall came everything fell.
Norm on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 1:17 am
The governments would have to artificially place value, onto ecologically valuable things, like planting trees & cleaning up dumps. Presently, the only value is assigned to capitalistic things like digging up mountains and manufacturing. De-manufacturing (take it apart to remove copper & steel etc) is a valuable thing to do, but its cumbersome and inefficient, manual work and always will be. The government should artificially place value onto de-manufacturing, then people would do it, and they would be employed, and it would be sustainable in regard to resources.
I dont think our political system is smart enough to do anything like that.
BillT on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 2:35 am
Norm, I don’t think humanity is smart enough to save itself. Not one word about population control. If there were only 1 billion of us, there would still be lots of oil and minerals and the world would not be one step from mass destruction.
DC on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 3:07 am
What norm refers to incentivizing positive behavior, a perfectly sensible and logical thing to do, and it would work too, if the right incentives were put out there.
But of course they are not. Corporations write in and permit only the incentives that benefit there particular business model, so thats all we get. I myself have no doubt that a great many folks would respond positevely to anti-corporate incenctives, but of course we dont write and enforce the laws do we? Corporations do.
The only place we see the kind of actively norm talks about is in the 3rd world were we dump all our i-junks and other toxic crap. The only incentive they get to recycle our cast-offs is sheer desperation, not a good way to go about things-but its the only incentive we put out there to clean up our crap. Extreme povety. Our own recycling incentives here run up against the same problem over and over-little monetary reward and it requires shutting stuff vast distances using…gas burning cars and trucks.
But if you look at this model and LTG even I beleive LTG model looked at things like efficenct recycling at levels far beyond what we do, and in every single case-that was simply not enough to avert collapse. So I dont know…
Kenz300 on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 4:25 am
The banks have become bigger than the governments. They need to be broken up into 2 or 3 smaller ones. A financial transaction tax needs to be implemented so the banks that created this mess can help to pay to fix it.
Sustainability is a concept that needs to grow.
M_B_S on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 6:28 am
It is not new its old stuff!
Read: “Global 2000” Report to the President, USA 1980
http://www.amazon.com/The-Global-2000-Report-President/dp/0140224416
M_B_S
Shaved Monkey on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 12:19 pm
When we have figures up until 2012 why does the actual stop at 2000 ?
Surely the trend line would be more believable with more accurate data?
Im not doubting the graphs just sceptical of the lack of current data.
Arthur on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 1:44 pm
I am afraid Bill is right and that humanity is not smart enough to see what is coming. Take the Dutch. They usually score high in international PISA and IQ tests, nevertheless:
http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Economie/335416/Nederlanders-geven-meer-geld-dan-ooit-uit-aan-benzine.htm
Elsevier is a rightwing-liberal magazine for high earners and hence higher educated people. It is a source of resistance against placing more wind turbines (that’s for tree huggers) and the energy crisis is a hoax. Reading the comments NOBODY states the obvious, namely that oil is slowly running out. They all blame the government for high taxes on oil, or international speculators, they fabulate about large numbers of oiltankers, waiting 20 miles out of the Dutch coast for higher oil prices, they blame car manufacturers on not producing more fuel efficient cars. And all these arguments are true to some degree. But nobody wants to acknowledge the real tragedy, namely that our present society is unsustaineble. They don’t want this to be true so they go into denial as long as possible.
Ah well, much of Europe’s oil goes via Rotterdam. That’s very good, for the Dutch at least. They will not be the first to get hit by coming events.
Arthur on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 1:50 pm
Kenz, you can break up large dinosaurs like AT&T, but not big banks in America. Wallstreet does not want that and they rule in America.