The Limits to Growth
How many times does it have to be said that you cannot have infinite growth forever in a finite system?
But when you try to point this out to market economists, especially ones employed by banks or megacorporations, while they won't actually dare to try to deny it, they will come up with all kinds of handwaving arguments for why the global economy isn't, like, you know, REALLY a finite system. Not like finite finite. Because [and at this point my brain just starts filtering out all the bullshit and dumping it to /dev/null, so I can't actually try to cite or debunk any of the bollocks rationalization for you].
Well, a current MIT study says that the 1970s Club of Rome study was right, and we're heading for the wall with our foot firmly on the gas.
The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.
Current empirical observational data aligns most closely with two projected future scenarios, BAU2 ("Business As Usual") and CT ("Comprehensive Technology"). Both predict "a slowdown and eventual halt in growth within the next decade or so"; the difference between the two is principally that BAU2 predicts exponentially rising pollution, a crash in food production and a collapse of industrialized society, while in the CT scenario we get pollution under control, food production dips but then recovers, and industrial output declines but does not crash. I'll leave you to look around you and gauge whether you think we're realistically going to get pollution under control any time soon, as Wall Street megacorporations fight desperately for their right to keep on polluting however it suits their business model.
There is a scenario among those posited by the Club of Rome designated SW ("Stable World"), in which we learn to live within our means. Unfortunately the SW scenario is the worst fit of all to current trends and observed empirical data over the last fifty years.
There is a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, you know. His name is GREED.
