Beyond the Limits (1992)
Donella & Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers, Text p. 8
- Story of the book
- 1972 The Limits to Growth
- Argued that present growth trends suggest humans will exceed the
earth's carrying capacity to support human life within 100 years
- In 1992 book Beyond the Limits say
- Original conclusions (of 1972 book) valid and when updated
things look worse than predicted
- Already "overshot limits"
- If don't change, virtually certain will have global economic
collapse in this century
- For Beyond the Limits: 30 Year update (2004) click here
- MAJOR CONCLUSIONS OF BEYOND THE LIMITS (1992)
- One: Gone "beyond the limits"; in a situation of "overshoot"
- Many essential resources are being used unsustainably
- Drawing on earth's resources faster than can be restored
- Many pollution levels are not sustainable (gone beyond the
earth's capacity to assimilate them and render them harmless)
- But we can have some amount of harmful pollutants
persisting in the env.
- Compare with Baxter's view about optimum pollution
- Two: W/o significant change (e.g., reduction in material and energy
flows), will have uncontrollable decline in per capita food, energy
use and industrial production
- Could happen in next few decades
- Involve a permanently impoverished env. and lower material
standard of living than if env. hadn't been so stressed
- Could people in the rich industrialized countries still do fine even
if average per human share was way down?
- Considering things like food biotechnologies?
- Three: Decline/collapse can be avoided if
- Revise policies of perpetual growth in material consumption
and population
- Current policy tries to solve our problems by constant
expansion (we are "addicted to growth")
- Drastically increase efficiency in use of material and energy
- Act like we did with the problem of CFCs and ozone depletion
- Four: A sustainable society is technologically/economically possible
and could be more desirable than our current society
- Choice for sustainability ("easing down") is not a
sacrifice/gloomy choice,
- But a chance to stop battering against earth's limits and to
transcend unnecessary limits in human institutions, minds,
hearts
- Doesn't involve poor frozen in poverty
- Today we have the tech to meet needs of all people w/o
exceeding earth's limits
- Doesn't require that the rich become poor
- But it does involve rich living at the more moderate
consumption level of Europeans?
- Need not involve reducing population or living standards, but
does involve reducing their growth
- At one point suggests average family size of two
- Our global economy is so wasteful/inefficient/inequitable, we can
reduce throughput and raise everyone's quality of life
- Throughput = flow of material & energy from env. to
economy and back to env. (as waste)
- We must reduce throughput and we can
- Increased efficiency of energy use (mainly via solar based
renewables) could allow us to hold our total energy use
constant (or decrease it) with no loss of productivity,
comfort, or convenience in rich countries and have steady
economic improvement in poor countries.
- But everyone can't live as American's do; can't bring everyone
into the industrial economy without overshoot and collapse
- For 12 billion people (U.N. figure now lower) to live as
American's do, economy must expand 20 times and the
world economy is already unsustainable
- Ecological footprint: How much nature one's lifestyle requires
- SIGNS OF OVERSHOOT
- Falling stocks of ground water, forests, fish, soils
- Rising accumulation of wastes/pollutants
- More effort aimed at getting harder to access resources
- Expending huge efforts toward obtaining what was once free
natural services (e.g., sewage treatment, flood control, air
purification, pest control, restoring soil nutrients and preserving
species)
- Deterioration in physical capacities (e.g., long term
infrastructure-e.g., railroads/roads)
- Reduced investment in human resources (education, health,
shelter) to meet consumption needs
- More conflicts over resources, pollution rights
- Greater gaps have and have nots
- WORRYING FACTS ABOUT WORLD SITUATION
- 1 of 5 billion eat less food than their bodies need (35,000-mainly
children, die of malnourishment related causes every day)
- Soil erosion exceeds soil formation on 1/3 U.S. cropland and on
1,300 million acres in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
- Deserts expanded size of France in 20 years
- Yearly 16 million acres of cultivated land become unproductive
due to erosion, 3.6 million due to salinization & water logging
- Before industrial revolution had 14 B acres of forest, now 10
(only 3.6 primary) (½ of this loss occurred from 1950 to 1990)
- ½ tropical forests gone (all gone in 50 years at current rate)
- This would exterminate 50% of species on earth
- North Americans use 40 times energy of those in developing
world (yet we have tech to be much more efficient)
- Drawing down fossil fuels with no plan and not enough
investment to power industrial economy when they are gone
- SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY WOULD
- "A sustainable society meets the needs of the present w/o
compromising the future's ability to meet their needs"
- Go for development (qualitative improvement, increasing
potentials), not unthinking growth (quantitative increase in
population and physical capital)
- Minimize use of nonrenewable resources and move to use of
renewables
- Not use renewables faster than they regenerate
- Use non-renewables with max efficiency, recycle them when can,
and not use non-renewables faster than generate substitutes
- Not pollute faster than env. can assimilate
- Enhance freedom
- Encourage flourishing of democracy and tech efficiency
- Provide better signals (e.g., inform us about environmental
conditions as well as about economic ones; internalize env. costs,
revise GNP to include env. costs)
- Stop exponential growth of population and physical capital (most
important)
- Solve problems of poverty, unemployment, and unmet non-material needs
- Growth hasn't and won't solve these problems
- A sustainable society needs to be just, fair and equitable
- Thesis of "social ecology": Need to solve the
problem of poverty and injustice to reach eco
sustainability
- Involves a revolution like the agricultural and industrial
revolutions
- Not just in technology and productivity but in maturity and
wisdom