• Corpus ID: 236964078

Update to limits to growth

@inproceedings{GayaHerrington2020UpdateTL,
  title={Update to limits to growth},
  author={GayaHerrington},
  year={2020}
}

• GayaHerrington
• Published 2020
• Economics

EditorManagingReview:HeinzSchandl Abstract In the 1972 bestseller Limits to Growth (LtG), the authors concluded that, if global society kept pursuing economic growth, it would experience a decline in food production, industrial output, and ultimately population, within this century. The LtG authors used a system dynamics model to study interactions between global variables, varying model assumptions to generate different scenarios. Previous empirical-data comparisons since then by Turner showed closest alignment with a scenario that ended in collapse. This research constitutes a data update to LtG, by examining to what extent empirical data alignedwith four LtGscenarios spanning a rangeof technological, resource, and societal assumptions. The research benefited from improved data availability since the previous updates and included a scenario and two variables that had not been part of previous comparisons. The two scenarios aligning most closely with observed data indicate a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity’s goal in the twenty-first century. Both scenarios also indicate subsequent declines in these variables, but only one—where declines are caused by pollution— depicts a collapse. The scenario that aligned most closely in earlier comparisons was not amongst the two closest aligning scenarios in this research. The scenario with the smallest declines aligned leastwith empirical data; however, absolute differenceswere often not yet large. The four scenarios diverge significantly more after 2020, suggesting that the window to align with this last scenario is closing.