Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

Rating:
Summary: The Summation of the Whole Thing.
Review: In 1972 the first edition of the 'Limits To Growth' was published. It said simply that there were limits to what the planet Earth could support. It made complete total and utter sense. After all, if the population kept growing forever then at some time all the molecules in the earth would be used up in flesh rather than rocks, air, water, etc. Obviously this isn't going to happen.

There's a limit to the amount of oil we can get out of the ground. And a large part of what remains is in the Middle East. No one in Government, either Republican or Democrat will say that we are in Iraq because that's where the oil is. Nor will they say we need to increase the fuel economy of our vehicles. The Republicans listen to the auto manufacturers management, the Democrats listen to the auto union members.

This single book covers every aspect of what's happening in the world. There are others on alternative energy, acid rain, the decline in fish production, everything. Here in one book is the overall summary. It covers every aspect. I'd say that it should be required reading in every high school, in every college. But of course it isn't.

Rating:
Summary: Important Distinctions Between "Growth" and "Progress"
Review: In the Authors' Preface, they provide important background information to their "30-Year Update": Published in 1972, "The Limits to Growth (LTG) reported that global ecological constraints (related to resource use and emissions) would have significant influence on global developments in the twenty-first century. LTG warned that humanity might have to divert much capital and manpower to battle these constraints -- possibly so much that the average quality of life would decline sometime during the twenty-first century." Then in 1992, the authors conducted a 20-year update of their original study and published the results in Beyond the Limits. "In BTL we studied global developments between 1970 and 1990 and used the information to update the LTG and the World3 computer model. BTL repeated the same message: In 1`992 we concluded that two decades of history mainly supported the conclusions we had advanced 20 years earlier."

However, BTL (10992) offered one new finding: "...humanity had already overshot the limits of Earth's support capacity. This fact was so important that we chose to reflect it in the title of the book." If you have not already read one or both of the two earlier volumes, these brief excerpts from the Authors' Preface to Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update will suggest a context within which to understand and appreciate the significance of what Meadows, Randers, and Meadows share in this third volume.

If I understand their key point, it is this: Humanity's consumption of Earth's resources (i.e. humanity's "ecological footprint") proceeds at an increasingly faster rate than Earth's available resources can accommodate (i.e. its "carrying capacity"). There must be prudent physical growth constraints on consumption in combination with replenishment of the Earth's resources. Otherwise, over time, "the world will experience overshoot and collapse in global resource use and emissions."

The authors clearly identify the global challenge (page xv), explain their reasons for writing this update (pages xviii and xix) in response to that challenge, and then conclude their Preface with the prediction that "it will take another decade before the consequences of [global ecological] overshoot are clearly observable and two decades before the fact of overshoot is generally acknowledged." They intend to provide another update in 2012, on the 40th anniversary of their first book.

In the 14 chapters which follow, Meadows, Randers, and Meadows explain why it is not only desirable but indeed imperative to

1. increase the consumption levels of the world's poor

2. reduce humanity's total ecological footprint

3. support technological advances (e.g. to achieve #1)

4. support personal change (e.g. to achieve #2)

5. think in terms of longer planning horizons

The authors offer a range of alternative scenarios (i.e. ten different "pictures" of how the 21st century may evolve) to encourage their reader's learning, reflection and personal choice. For me, Chapter 7 is especially valuable. Based on their structural analysis of the world, they offer seven general guidelines to expedite transitions to sustainability: extent the planning horizon (#5 previously), improve the "signals" (i.e. early-warning system for global ecology), speed up the response time to ecological crises, minimize use of nonrenewable resources, prevent the erosion of renewable resources, use all resources with maximum efficiency, and slow -- and eventually stop -- exponential growth of population and physical capital.

In the final chapter, Meadows, Randers, and Meadows briefly discuss the agricultural and industrial revolutions and then assert that the next revolution should respond to the need for sustainability of humanity on Earth. They share their vision of the sustainable society which such a revolution could achieve and even provide a ("by no means definitive") list of its dominant characteristics, urging their reader to develop it further. I agree with the authors that a sustainable world "can never be fully realized until it is widely imagined." Hence the importance of their ("by no means definitive") list...hence the even greater importance of having as many other people as possible also imagine precisely what kind of a world they would much prefer to live in.

There are obviously limits to how much of Earth's resources can be consumed or corrupted, without replenishment or purification, before they are significantly depleted and eventually exhausted. However, I believe that almost all limits on human imagination are self-imposed. If so, then there should be no limits on our collaborative efforts to reduce "humanity's ecological footprint" to achieve global sustainability of our precious natural resources if we can but summon and then (yes) sustain sufficient resolve to do so.

Rating:
Summary: Overshoot and collapse?
Review: It's been 30 years since the publication of the original LIMITS TO GROWTH, and according to the updated computer model (World3), overhoot and collapse is still the most likely outcome of current trends -- too many humans, consuming too much and polluting too much, are already in a condition of overshoot (by about 20%), and will most likely go charging on until crashing back to Earth, with population and consumption reduced back beneath the carrying capacity of the environment. Using World3 and a mountain of data, the authors show that improved technologies and efficient markets, while necessary, will not be sufficient to prevent overshoot and collapse -- it will also be necessary to radically restructure society to reduce our reckless squandering of the Earth's resources.

The book is full of data and analysis, and while not technically challenging, is not easy reading. But LIMITS is required reading for every human on the planet! It is certainly depressing, especially knowing that the message was not heeded in the Seventies, and it is still not being heeded in the Aughts. But despair is no more constructive than complacency -- those of us who have woken up to the crisis have got to act -- CARPE DIEM!

One of the authors, Donella Meadows, died before this third edition was completed. Dana was a tireless and infectious optimist, who never stopped spreading the word that we have to change our way of life if humanity and the other forms of life we share the planet with are to survive.

Read this book, share it with others, and do SOMETHING to promote the needed transition to an ecologically sustainable country and world. Do it for Dana, do it for your children, do it before it's too late. (See my OVERSHOOT AND COLLAPSE? list for more books and my reviews.)

Rating:
Summary: Proven Wrong
Review: Over the last 30 years, every prediction made by the Club of Rome in the 70's has been proven wrong. Proven reserves of oil have actually increased since that time. Prices of key commodities have decreased. Economic growth has been robust. Living standards thoroughout the world have improved, especially in China and India. There is always a market for hystrionic pessimism, just as there is a market for horror films; happily both are fictional. Unfortunately, the Club of Rome's sort of horror story is no fun if someone tells you it's not true so people get quite upset. But isn't it strange that there isn't a higher price to be paid for incorrect predictions? One would think that people would lose credibility as they suggest testable models that fail to predict events in the real world over long, statistically relevant periods of time.

I am starting to think that much popular science, particularly in the enviromental and political arenas, is a faith-based exercise not subject to traditional, rigorous analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Read and Respond
Review: This book proves that our lives of excess fueled by an incessant desire for more, are having serious consequences on the earth and therefore on our own shared well being. Did we ever realize that we were one with the environment and each other or is this saving recognition of truth still to come?
In reality we are still living with our 20th century lifestyles with little regard for even questioning whether we should change. This book proves we need to change our habits and our attitudes toward each other and the planet itself. It's amazing to me that we so readily discount years (30 Years in the this case) of scientific evidence that describes factually our energy, land and resource use, in ways that are overextening the earth's support systems, like air and water. This is further witnessed in our local papers with articles on inner city asthma from ozone and mercury rendering fish inedible, yet we live in denial. When will we accept that the human footprint is bigger than the earth can handle, i.e. unsustainable, and realize that it's only depressing if we do nothing about it?
If someone does not believe we have issues that we need to put governmental, corporate and individual resources toward resolving, I'd hand him this book which also talks to solutions including alterative energy sources and ways of being. Well defined facts and figures can help bring us toward the inclusion of ecological solutions as part of our shared concern for life. We need to achieve a paradigm shift toward sustainability leveraging the following starter tools: visioning, networking, truth telling, learning and loving; by the latter is meant love of humanity and nature and increasing desire for nurture, further emphasis on positive thinking over scare tactics, and the need to respond compassionately to the truth.


Rating:
Summary: Humanity Needs to Wake Up: We Are Devastating the Planet
Review: This is a thorough, scientific account of what mankind is doing ecologically to the planet. There are many charts, graphs and research studies proving that the planet is in danger.

Mankind has already gone past the level of sustainability. It's not a matter of IF, but a matter of WHEN the planet will not be able to sustain humanity at the current population level and standard of living.

This book explains about the earth's resources and how we are overusing them. Also about the byproducts of our use of these resources and the pollution it causes. Many examples are given of how people can change their ways of production and resource use.

It is disturbing to think what humans are doing to the planet and what the future will be if we don't change our ways. This book gives the big picture of what is happening ecologically to the planet and what needs to be done NOW to stop the devastation.

Rating:
Summary: Cliff hanger
Review: We are somehow over the edge of the cliff hanging in air, wondering when the drop will happen. How can our leaders know of this and not take action. We have been betrayed by our elected officials and must remember what made America great, Civil disobedience.

Have brain? read this book and be awakened.
The sleeper must awake.