beyond the limits

These curves are literally drawn from: p. 133, Meadows et al., BEYOND THE LIMITS, and from the 1997 Duncan & Youngquist's new World oil production model at http://www.halcyon.com/duncanrc/ . To run this model one must download the free Stella Run-Time at http://www.hps-inc.com/products/STELLA/runtime.html .

"Business as usual" scenario from BEYOND THE LIMITS: "In Scenario 1 the world society proceeds along its historical path as long as possible without major policy change. Technology advances in agriculture, industry, and social services according to established patterns. There is no extraordinary effort to abate pollution or conserve resources. The simulated world tries to bring all people through the demographic transition and into an industrial and then post-industrial economy. This world acquires widespread health care and birth control as the service sector grows; it applies more agricultural inputs and gets higher yields as the agricultural sector grows; it emits more pollutants and demands more nonrenewable resources as the industrial sector grows.

"The global population in Scenario 1 rises from 1.6 billion in the simulated year 1900 to over 5 billion in the simulated year 1990 and over 6 billion in the year 2000. Total industrial output expands by a factor of 20 between 1900 and 1990. Between 1900 and 1990 only 20% of the earth's total stock of nonrenewable resources is used; 80% of these resources remain in 1990. Pollution in that simulated year has just begun to rise noticeably. Average consumer goods per capita in 1990 is at a value of 1968-$260 per person per year—a useful number to remember for comparison in future runs. Life expectancy is increasing, services and goods per capita are increasing, food production is increasing. But major changes are just ahead.

"In this scenario the growth of the economy stops and reverses because of a combination of limits. Just after the simulated year 2000 pollution rises high enough to begin to affect seriously the fertility of the land. (This could happen in the 'real world' through contamination by heavy metals or persistent chemicals, through climate change, or through increased levels of ultraviolet radiation from a diminished ozone layer.) Land fertility has declined a total of only 5% between 1970 and 2000, but it is degrading at 4.5% per year in 2010 and 12% per year in 2040. At the same time land erosion increases. Total food production begins to fall after 2015. That causes the economy to shift more investment into the agriculture sector to maintain output. But agriculture has to compete for investment with a resource sector that is also beginning to sense some limits.

"In 1990 the nonrenewable resources remaining in the ground would have lasted 110 years at the 1990 consumption rates. No serious resource limits were in evidence. But by 2020 the remaining resources constituted only a 30-year supply. Why did this shortage arise so fast? Because exponential growth increases consumption and lowers resources. Between 1990 and 2020 population increases by 50% and industrial output grows by 85%. The nonrenewable resource use rate doubles. During the first two decades of the simulated twenty-first century, the rising population and industrial plant in Scenario 1 use as many nonrenewable resources as the global economy used in the entire century before. So many resources are used that much more capital and energy are required to find, extract, and refine what remains.

"As both food and nonrenewable resources become harder to obtain in this simulated world, capital is diverted to producing more of them. That leaves less output to be invested in basic capital growth.

"Finally investment cannot keep up with depreciation (this is physical investment and depreciation, not monetary). The economy cannot stop putting its capital into the agriculture and resource sectors; if it did the scarcity of food, materials, and fuels would restrict production still more. So the industrial capital plant begins to decline, taking with it the service and agricultural sectors, which have become dependent upon industrial inputs. For a short time the situation is especially serious, because the population keeps rising, due to the lags inherent in the age structure and in the process of social adjustment. Finally population too begins to decrease, as the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services." [p.p.132-134, Meadows; See also http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC36/Gilman1.htm ]

OIL AS A FINITE RESOURCE (WRI, 1996): "Two important conclusions emerge from this discussion. First, if growth in world demand continues at a modest 2 percent per year, production could begin declining as soon as the year 2000. Second, even enormous (and unlikely) increases in EUR oil buy the world little more than another decade (from 2007 to 2018). In short, unless growth in world oil demand is sharply lower than generally projected, world oil production will probably begin its long-term decline soon—and certainly within the next two decades."

BEYOND THE LIMITS is an update to the Club of Rome's 1972 LIMITS TO GROWTH and is endorsed by Jan Tinbergen. Tinbergen shared the first Nobel Prize for Economics in 1969. [For a good history of this issue, see: Neurath, 1994: FROM MALTHUS TO THE CLUB OF ROME AND BACK; M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY; ISBN 1-56324-408-X. For a detailed book about the Club of Rome itself, see: Moll: FROM SCARCITY TO SUSTAINABILITY; Peter Lang, 1995.]

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