[Analysis/Review] The Limits To Growth

A review of the influential Limits to Growth study and its 2022 and 2004 updates

The Limits to Growth is a scientific publication based on a number of computer simulations performed in the 60s and 70s. While the book uses a scientific and disconnected approach to the mathematics and models, the authors are not. Put simply, the Limits to Growth discusses series of simulations based on resource scarcity, human population, energy availability, food availability, capital, pollution, and quality of life. Using those simulations it is possible to project into the future the way in which human civilization will change… and the models predict catastrophic collapse.

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Various simulations consistently show that non-renewable resources, industrial output, and quality of life would have to decline at some point in the near future. In all simulations, human civilization eventually runs into some type of imposed limit, overshoots that limit, and declines. In some simulations the decline occurs quickly and catastrophically, in some simulations the decline is more of a “soft landing.” The “Business as Usual” model is the most compelling, and the default of the original 1972 simulations. The BaU model showed inevitable catastrophic collapse predicted to occur in the mid 21st century.

Simulations revealed dramatic deterioration expected to reach a crescendo between 2025 and 2075 in the mid 21st century. In the 70s it was argued that the authors were environmental extremists and alarmists and leftwing extremists. In the 2000s it was argued that we had technologically-developed our way out of these problems. In the 2020s there are new arguments about why reading The Limits to Growth supports “right-wing accelerationists” and “misinformation.” Societies don’t change much.

1972 Quote:

“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”

2002 Quote:

“In the early 1970s, it was possible to believe that maybe we could make the necessary changes. But now it is too late. We are entering a period of many decades of uncontrolled climatic disruption and extremely difficult decline.”

2022 Quote:

“the world is far from a stabilized world scenario where the overshoot and collapse mode is brought to a halt. As a society, we have to admit that despite 50 years of knowledge about the dynamics of the collapse of our life support systems, we have failed to initiate a systematic change to prevent this collapse.”

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The various updates to this work and continued development of the computational model all show decline in human population, industrial output, and quality of life somewhere around the mid-21st century. As such, it has been latched onto by various environmental factions as a justification of their own world view. Many them claim that “we only have 10 years left”

In actuality, the “Limits to Growth” simulations and models all indicate that we ceased having “time left” somewhere in the 1990s and that our current growth trends are going to be forcibly halted by resource scarcity or pollution. One thing that was interestingly minimized was the Demographic Decline. In 1972, the original Limits to Growth paper was published immediately after the book “The Population Bomb.” Thus it was presumed that humans would continue reproducing ad infinatum until severe population collapse was inevitable.

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In the 1972 version of the document an ecological view highlighting over-population, toxic waste, radioactive waste, and a shortage of fossil fuels was the focus. In the 2002 version of the document, the focus was instead of deforestation, global warming, global CO2 levels, fossil fuels (again) and the hole in the Ozone layer. In the 2022 version of the document, Rare Earth Elements, Chromium, Sand, water and critical materials are highlighted as potential points of failure.

What’s interesting is that there are always potential shortages and potential ecological disasters pointed to by the Limits to Growth documentation, but rarely have those materialized as real failure points. That’s not to say there isn’t an upcoming catastrophic collapse, but it does seem very likely that the original document fails to understand the nature of a collapse and dramatically overestimates the severity of such a scenario.

There are real limits to the non-renewable resources on the planet. There are real limits to energy, food, agricultural land and industrial output. The way that we ram into those limits may be significantly softer than the Limits to Growth : World 3 : Business As Usual (BAU) model predicts.

Fortunately we now have 50 years of data against which we can test the predictions of the Limits to Growth model, and see if we can identify discrepancies.

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For now, I’m doing this research for free and putting my ideas out there because I think it’s important. I would like to do work like this full-time, but to do that I’ll need paid subscribers. It’s $6 a month (or $60 for a year) for a full subscription. There will be subscriber-locked publications in the near future, so please subscribe today to gain access.

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I highly recommend reading the material, but the original material is somewhat hyperbolic in terrorizing the reader about future-hazards. One should take what is said regarding the model with a large grain of salt. The further development of the human ecosystem is going to be more complex than a simple computational model. The model itself does not account for regional variations, or voluntary population decline. It also doesn’t account for political catastrophe or the fact that different human populations behave differently in the face of resource consumption and ecological preservation.

There are many articles on the Limits to Growth model (both from a right-wing framing and a left-wing framing). There are recommended links to associated material below if you’re interested in reading through it yourself.

• Limits to Growth, 50 years ago and today

• Recalibration of Limits to Growth: An update of the World 3 Model

• Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data

• ‘The Limits to Growth’: A Book That Launched a Movement

• What the controversial 1972 ‘Limits to Growth’ report got right: Our choices shape the future conditions for life on Earth

• A Synopsis: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

• YOUTUBE 10 Years to Midnight Part 1

• YOUTUBE 10 Years to Midnight Part 2

• YOUTUBE 10 Years to Midnight Part 3

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Additionally, I would also highly recommend the books “Breaking Together” and “The Ecotechnic Future” as they provide compelling visions for the causes of structural industrial collapse, panic among the elites, and the effects of De-growth. The Ecotechnic Future provides a vision of what might come after the decline of Global Industrial society and what Scarcity Industrialism might look like as our species hammers into hard physical limits. The economy, as it turns out, cannot continue expanding forever.

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What Did The Limits To Growth Model Get Right?

Historically, it appears that human populations begin to decline at roughly 70% of carrying capacity. That’s perceived carrying capacity in all likelihood, but still something worth noting. The original World 2 BaU run is shown below. An exponential rise in global population until around the year 2024, followed by a marked decline in population, decline in capital investment, and increase in pollution.

A number of additional scenarios were examined where the non-renewable resources were dramatically increased by 200% and simulated again. In the second scenario, pollution rates become unsustainable and a dramatic population decline occurred around 2025 followed by industrial output.

In most cases, the population decline begins dramatically ahead of the UN projected global population decline (around 2100). The UN projections are generally based on current rates of population growth and decline, while the World 3 model ties it to industrial output and food scarcity. It’s much more likely that global population decline is going to begin in the next 10 years (prior to 2035) than in 70 years. There are numerous reasons, some political and some industry-based. Simply put: if global industrial output begins to fall, the international shipping that provides food-aid to 3rd world nations will evaporate faster than nearly every other major industry.

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Comparing the model predictions to 50 years of real-world (estimated) data shows deviations. First and foremost is that we are not adhering to the “Business as Usual” version of the World 3 Model. Deviation from the BaU model began somewhere around 2015 and shows continued increases in Global Human Welfare, a fall in birth-rates that doesn’t quite keep up with the anticipated global collapse, and Services per Capita that dramatically exceed the modeled values. Indicating that if there is going to be some type of industrial collapse, it’ll be occurring further in our future than calculated by the BaU model.

Sources for the above figures are: A Comparison to the Limits of Growth with 30 Years of Reality, Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse, and The Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth model: still prescient 50 years later

Even the BaU model recalibration does not seem to square with current real-world data. In that model, industrial output (globally) reaches a peak in 2020 and begins a rapid decline. While that may still be the case, it seems unlikely as new mines are opening across the world and atomic energy is seeing major global interest. There is certainly global economic slowing take place (covered up by inflation of the currency in the United States and many industrialized nations), but economic slowing is different from the type of stagnation → collapse predicted by the BaU model.

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The BaU model is not the only model generated by the Limits to Growth : World 3 system. A number of different models were input to the system to identify resource scarcity at a global level, and how the structural collapse of global industry might occur.

A closer analysis of the various indices indicates that the BaU model is not the model we’re operating under. It seems more likely that human civilization is behaving far more closely to the CT model from the Limits to Growth : World 3 simulations. The CT model shows a stabilization of the population around 2050 followed by a dramatic reduction in average industrial output beginning somewhere between 2025 and 2045. The CT model is predicated on:

• 200% the non-renewable natural resources compared to the 1972 estimation

• An exceptionally high rate of technological development dramatically improving efficiency and improved efficiencies in industrial technologies

• Non-renewable resources eventually become too expensive for consistent production and a supply-crunch leads to population stagnation and industrial output stagnation eventually stabilizing the human population on earth

The point most readers seem to focus on appears to be “Food” but that is not the most crucial component for general wellbeing in an Industrialized Nation like the United States or former Soviet Union or China. What becomes most important are the "Pollution” and the “Industrial Output” variables.

Industrial output allows artificially enriched farming and the shipping of food and resources from other regions of the world permitting the retention of quality of life. Additionally, economic growth is predicated on continued industrial growth, so stability in the global financial system also requires economic growth, and therefore industrial growth. Unfortunately perpetual economic growth forever isn’t likely.

Pollution is another key variable that should be tracked, but it is a highly regionalized. Catastrophic decline in productivity, water availability and quality of life due to pollution will depend heavily on the degree of pollution and ecological preservation that’s taken place. While problems like micro-plastics and endocrine disruptors are somewhat global, they also increase in severity in localized areas. Europe and North America will have less serious negative side-effects due to pollution than China or India. Indeed, in China it’s estimated that 70% of their available freshwater has become so contaminated as to be unusable by humans.

Long-term pollution issues key when it comes to the national demographic-declines… importing hordes from the 3rd world as such populations are very likely to bring their cultural ecologies with them leading to a polluted landscape in BC Canada resembling the Ganges river.

Whether through incidental endocrine disruptors or simple voluntary population decline due to extreme rates of urbanization, demographic decline is beginning to occur. That’s creating some interesting unplanned side-effects in deviation from the World 3 models. The indication is that population decline will reduce the sudden-impact of resource shortages in two ways:

• A reduction of the high-consumption population in the industrialized world will create an impetus for localized production and a general decrease in industrial demands for consumer goods.

• If the Elites are successful in their attempts to mass-import a slave-caste from the third world, that caste will serve as an additional buffer of labor that accepts dramatically lower standards of living.

The importation of a slave-caste is not something that will improve quality of life for the lower 70% of the population of a nation, but such a caste could serve as a buffer of labor. It may also, hopefully, make the native population angry enough to remove and replace their leaders. Removing “infinite-economic-growth” leaders and replacing them with sane leadership under the age of 75 will probably be beneficial in the long run. Particularly as it pertains to the future development of a more holistic civilization.

Of course this begs a new problem:

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The Catastrophic State of Economic De-Growth

As stated in the book Breaking Together, the most likely cause of catastrophic failure will not be a sudden reduction in industrial output or food supply. Instead a sudden contraction of the proverbial pie is likely to occur due to national economic forces. The global economic system is built on a fiat, debt-based currency system. That is, every dollar in circulation is owed back with interest.

In debt-based monetary systems, it’s in the interest of individuals, nations, and corporations to take on massive amounts of debt. The assets purchased with debt grow in value over time and the debt can be repaid. The down-side of this treadmill of debt is that the longer it goes on, the faster it speeds up. Fiat based systems jump-started the industrial revolution and allow nations to trade much more freely at the international scale. In economic systems, debt-based fiat currency promotes growth, lending, and liquidity…

Without growth a debt-based fiat system necessitates hyper-inflation or sudden economic collapse. Economic growth is required. It took 200 years for the United States to go 1 Trillion dollars into debt. It took 10 years for it to go from 1 Trillion in debt to 30 Trillion in debt. As debt-based fiat systems go on for longer, they accelerate in the rate at which interest must be paid back to the lending institution (i.e. the international [bankers]). Additionally, they dramatically increase the amount of power that lending institutions have over the body politic. Sudden interest-rate changes can easily collapse national economies and nation-states alike.

As industrialized nation-states approach the Limits to Growth, their economic systems become highly unstable. The 2008 crisis was the bellwether for larger economic short-falls. The 2020 Covid response was used in significant part to justify inflation and money-printing to conceal international industrial economic shortages. “If there’s a crisis and inflation any way, no one will notice an extra 50% or 60% on the books so we can buy expensive luxury items for ourselves and keep our economic system puttering along” is the thought process I’d imagine many Western elites experienced.

Weaker nations will collapse after dramatic currency failures: Sri Lanka, Greece, Turkey. After the economic collapse, the nations see a reduced standard of living and and never truly recover to previous heights. The world still operates on a debt-based fiat currency system, but it’s growing unstable. Hegemonic industrial nations like the United States and China will be more apt to retain economic power and standards of living for longer, but are struggling. Nations like the United Kingdom and Germany are facing critical failures already (now in 2024) with companies like Volkswagen forced to shut down factories.

The issue is that the Elites are bound up in the issue. Their wealth is tied to the macro-economic system and industrial globalization. So they’ll do everything possible to kick the can down the road: inflation, currency manipulation, outsourcing, etc. Normal people will suffer as bizarre supply shocks spread globally as this or that specific resource starts to run dry. Eventually a global economic change-of-state will need to occur as the global economy shifts from one of infinite-growth to an economy of stagnation. If we’re lucky it’ll take on a monarchal form, if we’re not lucky it’ll take on a form of corporate tyranny.

In all cases, stagnation causes a failure of the Keynesian economic infinite-growth model, which causes structural economic collapse necessitating redevelopment of global industrial systems. Negative effects will be mitigated in nations with strong export potential: the USA due to food and oil, Russia due to oil and industrial goods, India due to tech-outsourcing and potentially China. Negative effects will be severe in post-industrial nations that rely on the banking sector or luxury-exports to maintain their economic systems: The United Kingdom, Germany, California and Taiwan.

The UK is at particular risk, which is why their currency has lost value so quickly. The Elites in the UK are attempting to stave off economic-contraction by simply importing hordes of foreigners… but inevitably they become a drain on the national system too creating a spiral of failure.

Elite Panic, Speculator Trading and Economic Stagnation will occur before any actual shortages do in all likelihood. There will, however, be little to no recovery in quality of life after-words. When the gigantic pie of international trade is growing, every ones piece can get bigger so there is less cause for conflict. With the pie stagnating, or shrinking, suddenly every one will get very viscous about their piece. Elites and laborers alike.

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Advice

Don’t over-emphasize the potential for global industrial collapse in your own life. Especially not in the United States, which is a nation that’ll better weather the coming period of economic stability than most. Eventually, however, the global economic system will be forcibly reorganized from one of industrialized-infinite-growth to one that functions in a stagnant economy. Currencies will have to change and peoples ways of life will have to change.

Rent-seeking will be more valuable than production or efficiency. Asset values rise and quality of life generally deteriorates. Where nations are more industrialized (and the elites more tuned-in to reality) these trends will occur the most quickly.

Currency classes that function in a de-growth economy will be preferred, and assets are going to become the primary value. Company-stock (predicated on speculation and growth) will become extremely volatile through this period. Eventually such financial tools will stagnate in real value (i.e. value after inflation). In environments like this, deflationary assets are going to be preferred: real-estate, gold, bitcoin are going to be solid bets. Something stable, liquid, and fungible. Or one can try and play with the speculators in the asset markets. Most people will probably lose, but a few might become billionaires with a few good trades.

Unstable times are great for making, and losing, fortunes.

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