MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030 816
suraj.sun writes "A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from 'global economic collapse' and 'precipitous population decline' if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace. The study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without 'drastic measures for environmental protection,' the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash."
Couldn't have called that one. (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, the sun is bright.
Re: (Score:3)
The thing is, the universe naturally moves toward equillibrium. Gas supplies dwindle, gas prices go up, people buy less gas, and equillibrium occurs.
Gas costs make it too expensive to ship food across the world, we start growing food locally, an equillibrium occurs.
Gas costs make it impossible to get to work for less than you make? You get a job closer to home, or telecommute, or any number of other things. No jobs close to home, you move closer to the jobs. An Equillibrium occurs.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes it really is just you.
Let's review what you just did and what they did, shall we?
They :
Went to high school and excelled then gained admittance to the most competitive undergraduate and gradate environments then spent long years honing their skills and advancing their knowledge in a rigorous disciplined environment in which only the best of the best of the best can survive.
They then each spent their entire professional lives investigating subject matter relevant to their findings using the most so
Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:3, Insightful)
From the original source of garbage in garbage out.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's amazing how few people understand that Club of Rome's predictions were never disproved in principle. Sure the timing was off, but it's impossible to predict the oil peak accurately given uncertainty of reserve data and technological progress. BTW, if you put your money on the latter, please know that it cannot outrun the laws of nature. The economic growth will have to stop (or, at least, become less than exponential, which is anathema just the same to most modern economists) before the humankind will boil itself with the amount of energy it will need to use to continue it. As things stand, we may not even be able to tech our way out of the oil crunch.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sure the timing was off, but it's impossible to predict the oil peak accurately given uncertainty of reserve data and technological progress."
So you are saying their prediction was right even though it was wrong?
As energy use increases, energy will get more expensive, providing pressure to use less energy or find more efficient ways to use energy. It's a self-correcting system, as long as there are no market distortions like, say, massive oil subsidies, or ridiculous regulations preventing new energy generation methods from being adopted.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Informative)
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So you are saying their prediction was right even though it was wrong?
As energy use increases, energy will get more expensive, providing pressure to use less energy or find more efficient ways to use energy. It's a self-correcting system, as long as there are no market distortions like, say, massive oil subsidies, or ridiculous regulations preventing new energy generation methods from being adopted.
It's a self-correcting system
This is the sort of happy talk that underlies so much simplistic thinking. You are 100 percent correct - the system will indeed "self correct". And a collapse is a self correction.
A more extreme example is one that a co-worker once made to me. We were talking about toxic waste. He argued that ther was no reason to regulate or otherwise control it. His exact words were "Regulation of waste is a socialist money grab and a waste of money, because we will adapt to it, just like
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:4, Informative)
In terms of home power, nuclear power is insanely cheap. Specifically Thorium power. There is not much reason we could not power cars with miniature nuclear generators if we put enough research into it so that crashing into them doesn't leak radiation everywhere, but right now that is not feasible, so mobile power would still be an issue.
The biggest reason it isn't used internationally is mainly because every government is scared of a meltdown even though any modern Nuclear engineer would build a reactor which has a non reactive default state, that even if catastrophic failure happens it can not melt down.
Very few of those reactor designs have ever been put in practice (I don't know of any that have) because of the perpetual banning of new reactors in many parts of the world.
The other reason is the massive up front costs, mainly because we have had this international armistice against it for two decades, nobody has the manfacturing tech to make these reactors in a rigorous patterned way.
So it is a perpetual failure, but if we had sustainable nuclear power with the modern safe reactors, specifically Thorium power, energy costs would probably drop in the long run because a single reactor can last a hundred years and the fuel costs nothing compared to the costs of maintaining the plant or building it in the first place or staffing it properly. But modern designs would not require as much oversight if their failure state is to power down.
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The most obvious example to my mind is the switch from wood to coal in railroad locomotives and house heating. As it became inconvenient and expensive to cut ever-more-distant trees and the supplies declined, the price of wood fuel went up and was replaced by more energy-dense coal.
Gasoline engines have slowly improved efficiency and power/weight for over a century. This is a result of consumer demand and manufacturers seeking a competitive advantage.
It is precisely greed, rational self interest, that leads
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Idiot Malthusians have predicted the imminent end of the world due to overpopulation for hundreds of years. Every time they go out on a limb and say the end will be by a given date, they are outed for the charlatans that they are.
You have to understand that you can't just pick a hypothesis and refuse to refine it with the coming of new data. When you continue to make wrong prediction after wrong prediction, you have to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED, and start from scratch. Let the DATA guide you, not your own dumb ideas that are based on nothing but your own destrudo.
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Idiot Malthusians have predicted the imminent end of the world due to overpopulation for hundreds of years. Every time they go out on a limb and say the end will be by a given date, they are outed for the charlatans that they are.
It turns out the original study said "Everything will be great! Just like the previous 500 years technology will continue to do more with less and everyone in the world will be substantially better off. A true golden age is upon us". Then when no one cared they decided to change it to gloom and doom so they could garner a little press.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
From the AnnRand tea party point of view? yes.
But they were right if you look at the true disparity in rich and poor. The poor in the rest of the world live in fricking dirt holes. The poorest in the USA live like the rich in many 3rd world countries.
The gap between the worlds poor and rich is growing exponentially. right now the top 1% of the united states could buy real homes for 100% of the worlds poor and still be the top 1% rich. Yes it's that bad. And it will get worse. The rich have no problem with $6.00 a gallon gas. The poor have to decide is it worth paying 50% of their weekly income to pay for gas to get to work. Why? well the poor cant afford a nice shiny new Hybrid. they have to drive what they can afford to buy for $500-$2000 junker from 12 years ago. That means a 8-18mpg gas hog that is falling apart.
They also cant live near work or take public transportation in many places because of rich assholes refusing to pay for trains and buses. Large cities have it like NYC and Chicago, but then the poor cant afford to live there unless they are in the slums where it's dangerous to live and, suprise, bus serivce has been cancelled. so they get to walk 2 miles to the nearest bus stop.
It self perpetuates. The rich will not pay for things for the evil PARASITES to use. Walk to work you prole! a lot of things can be done to turn it all around. problem is it gives things to the poor, and that just can not be allowed to happen.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Funny)
When you don't have an argument, just use ad hominem!
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
You have to understand that you can't just pick a hypothesis and refuse to refine it with the coming of new data. When you continue to make wrong prediction after wrong prediction, you have to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED, and start from scratch. Let the DATA guide you, not your own dumb ideas that are based on nothing but your own destrudo.
Recent data tell that the global oil production has been on a plateau since 2005, despite the rollercoasting prices. It's hard to tell without hindsight, but the peak of the oil-fueled civilization may be happening now. And there has never been a time in history when people had to change their primary fuel source on the global scale, when the previous best option was becoming scarce. But let this not upset your cozy, self-assured, technologically optimistic worldview.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Monetary manipulation is destroying the economy, which has lead to declining demand. Real costs of production in dollar terms are rising because the world is being flooded with dollars. Price oil in gold, and you will see what I mean. If oil really was becoming scarce, its real price would be rising. http://pricedingold.com/crude-oil/ [pricedingold.com]
Further, think about what you are saying here. You are denying the fact of technological progress. This flies in the face of every decade of the past 400 years. You think technological progress has peaked too? You think everything JUST HAPPENS to be shutting down RIGHT NOW, when YOU are here to make crazy predictions? You think the world is REALLY ending THIS time, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of other times people have predicted the end?
Do you see the fundamental flaw in your thinking?
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No. Monetary manipulation is destroying the economy, which has lead to declining demand. Real costs of production in dollar terms are rising because the world is being flooded with dollars. Price oil in gold, and you will see what I mean. If oil really was becoming scarce, its real price would be rising. http://pricedingold.com/crude-oil/ [pricedingold.com]
I see what you've done there. Gold, as other commodities, has been priced through the roof lately, just like oil.
Further, think about what you are saying here. You are denying the fact of technological progress. This flies in the face of every decade of the past 400 years. You think technological progress has peaked too?
No, but there never has been a challenge like this: effect a radical technological change when a resource needed to do pretty much anything is becoming scarce. Actually, I'm wrong: there was this challenge for such advanced societies of their day as Maya or Easter Island Polynesians, and they lost.
Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
The Maya didn't reach peak anything--the most current thought is that they had a long drought
So, they reached peak water
And the Easter Islanders were barbarians who had no concept of land as property, so their thug chiefs took all the wood and used it
So, they reached peak wood.
It's interesting how you cherry pick the data you use. When Easter islanders waste their wood in erecting statues, they are stupid, when we waste our oil in SUVs we are civilized...
For ENERGY, there are many, MANY sources, the vast majority of which aren't economically viable because they consume more resources than they produce.
FTFY.
Thorium can run the world for a thousand years
If only we had some super alloy that can hold the molten salt without being eaten away. If thorium were that easy to use we would be using it.
I think you have been reading Popular Mechanics too much. Take a look at your back issues, those wonderful new energy sources like thorium and nuclear fusion have been right around the corner since the 1950s. Oh, and didn't they predict in the 1960s that oil shale and tar sands would be providing all our oil by now?
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This is like saying that my prediction that the world was going to end today at 7am was never disproved in principle, it was just my timing that was off.
Malthusians have been wrong for 200 years, and they will continue to be wrong for the next 200.
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at an exponentially growing rate, which is what the humankind has been doing to date.
No it hasn't. From past experience we know that all "exponential" natural processes are actually tracking a logistic function [wikipedia.org].
In fact population growth is already well past the inflection point (change in sign of the second derivative) predicted by a logistic function. Nowadays even the most pessimistic projections predict a drop in population at some point in the second half of the XXI century with less alarmist projectio
Well this could be a bad thing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well this could be a bad thing (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure that the Good Brothers of the St. Leibowitz Priory can help here. They just need enough novices to keep the threadmill running.
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Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, people have been predicting the imminent collapse of civilization for quite a while now with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, our high-tech society is basically a house of cards and it has to collapse sooner or later.
Forrester's group, btw, are the same folks who produced the Club of Rome-funded "Limits to Growth" study in the early '70s, which also predicted serious trouble around 2030. You can choose to read this as consistency, good initial assumptions, or simply a pig-headed insistence on sticking to his original premises rather than admit error, as you wish.
Re:Again... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, but the Joint Forces Command (aka the US millitary) even said that we hit peak oil in 2010.
No, really. Click this link and skip ahead to page 24
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf [jfcom.mil]
Re:Again... (Score:4, Informative)
Err sorry, jumped the gun. It's been a while since I looked at the document. It's on page 29:
P.S. "shortfall in supply" == skyrocketing prices as consumers compete with their dollars to fuel their farm tractors and war tanks
Re:Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely unrelated to oil, but while skimming over the report, figure on page 30 struck me as odd. Anyone doing such an extrapolation without providing a thorough basis justifying is doing something questionable.
On the graph showing grain demand, you see a fairly linear progression between 1960 and 1990 with a slight regression 1990 onwards. There seem to be a local increase in demand just before 2010, but it seems non significant considering earlier trend deviations. But suddenly, after 2010, the extrapolation shows a strong increase in the rate, contradicting a 20 year regression trend. Added to that local variations on the extrapolated data that can hardly be attributed to any model...
I'll restrain myself to extrapolate the credibility of the whole report based on this single figure though.
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Re:Again... (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>"a population and economic crash."
Which is why I think the EU and US should institute a 1-child-per-couple policy* to control population. Otherwise come 2050 Mother Nature will be downsizing our population through starvation and suffering. Better we do it ourselves.
*
*Maybe a 2 child/couple policy would meet less resistance.
Re:Again... (Score:5, Informative)
Er, have you looked at the numbers? US fertility rate among native-born US citizens tends to be at below the replacement rate of 2.1. Immigration tends to drive US population growth rates.
Europe is already below replacement rates in their fertility levels. 1.59.
Numbers and sources can be found at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
If you want to downsize the US or EU's population, you could do it through preventing immigration, and the population would drop naturally. But there are some pretty severe downsides to closing off immigration, and it only pushes the problem to somewhere else.
p
Re:Again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Computer Models (Score:5, Insightful)
i can imagine the Civilization model:
World ends in 2030 when Bismarck conquers Spain!
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Idiots! (Score:3)
Didn't they learn anything from the Prophets of Old? Now if this doesn't happen then the people who made this prophecy will be beheaded and their other work entirely discredited. Here let me fix this for them.
I predict Global economics collapse by 2113
Now in a century or so there will be crazies doing all sorts of nuts stuff based upon my ancient and wise prediction. Now just imagine if I made a calendar system and decided to stop at the year 2113 instead.
Drastic Measures (Score:2)
Such as a one child law? The lottery? Soylent green?
What kind of drastic measures do they mean?
Useless prediction (Score:2)
As 99.999% of the people that has power just focus on his own profit.
Insert title here (Score:3, Insightful)
The same frauds are making the same claims in the same ways for 50 years. They are physical scientists who don't understand economics, with new technology and substitutes leading to ever-increasing quality and length of life -- sans goverment intervention.
Theodore Roosevelt decried the coming "timber crisis" because rotting railroad ties would soon consume all lumber production at current replacement rates. Then someone invented using creosote coatings.
Yes, you can predict this will happen. That is Julian Simon's theory, used to make predictions which come true over and over and over again. Said computer models don't include millions of scientists and engineers in a free society working to satisfy mass wants for profits, which call into existence new tech all the time. This is just the latest in sub-sentient drooling idiocy, disproven again and again and again.
Re:Insert title here (Score:5, Insightful)
You may mock Roosevelt, but perhaps he was aware, as you seemingly aren't, of how many past civilisations have collapsed due to timber crises... Easter Island being one of the most dramatic. What if someone hadn't invented creosote coatings? Sure, technology provided a solution that time, and many other times in recent history, but there are plenty of other times it hasn't.
Our modern global/western civilisation is big and impressive, I'll give it that. But if you take the historical perspective, the number of civilisations that have collapsed is quite a long list, and some of them were quite big and impressive, too.
So yeah, we've got lots of scientists. You think we're the first civilisation to have lots of scientists? Sure, we're more advanced than our predecessors, but do you really think that our civilisation's size, or even technology like the internet makes us so different from all other civilisations to come before us, that we're immune to collapse? On the contrary, our current civilisation is so big that most efforts to make significant changes seem almost completely ineffectual. And that oil is going to run out.
I've certainly not abandoned hope, but I'd like to think I've got beyond the mindset of thinking that people in history were so radically different from us. Technology may well provide a solution to all our problems, but it also might not. Isn't it wise to prepare, at least slightly, for that eventuality? Isn't believing otherwise just placing blind faith in a deus ex machina?
crappy difference-equation mathematics (Score:5, Interesting)
This group was wrong in the 1970s. And is still wrong in the 2010s.
Re:crappy difference-equation mathematics (Score:5, Informative)
Not surprising considering our growth (Score:4, Insightful)
Our societies are now based on rampant consumerism and the freedom of the individual to do whatever they want, so long as it's not illegal and they can pay for it. As a result, we have gone from a few hundred million to seven billion people within a century. If we value our natural world, we will find some way to check this growth sooner rather than later.
The problem with these models... (Score:5, Insightful)
We tend not to deplete a resource if possible, but when it gets scarce enough we go for alternatives. If pork or cattle get to expensive we go with less resource needed chickens or turkeys.
Usually the things that us humans kill off forever, are things that at least in our short term mindset see are things that are not directly useful for us. We don't see a drop in cattle. But we see a drop in wolves, as they are in competition with us for our cattle... So we kill the wolves, they are not really a direct resource for us so they killed. As well as lot of bugs and other animals. I am not saying this is a good thing we should work hard to preserve nature for it is better in the long term. But as human nature when scarcity happens we change our behavior, and we wont change our behavior until we feel the effect of scarcity.
Re:The problem with these models... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since your post was certified insightful, maybe you could help me with a question that I have: what should they have assumed instead if what they wanted to do is predict what would happen if we go on like this? Eh?
The problem here is oil, not pork. There is at the moment no viable substitute for oil. People would like to believe that there is, but it is not true. The Prius, and all these other things are just a distraction. They only work in the current environment because they are the exception, and not the rule. It is simply not realistically possible to replace all internal combustion cars with battery-powered ones.
I do not think it is impossible to solve the problems humanity is facing. I just think humanity will not do it.
politically motivated (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030.
Well then, they're bullshit. Every single country in the world that has ever industrialized has experienced steep declines in population growth as its citizens become wealthier and more educated. This trend is already very noticeable in the up-and-coming Asian and BRIC countries. There is no reason, none whatsoever, to assume that the trend will not apply (gradually) to every other country as they find their way to productive governments and growth--in fact, really, only Africa and the Middle East are left at this point, and thing there are starting to change.
There can be only one reason to base models on such a startlingly unlikely assumption...
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Every single country in the world that has ever industrialized has experienced steep declines in population growth as its citizens become wealthier and more educated. This trend is already very noticeable in the up-and-coming Asian and BRIC countries.
Indeed, but it is unclear when this will happen to populous African countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania. [economist.com] Nigeria could rise from 150 million today to 425 million by 2050, Tanzania could rise from 50 million today to 300 million by 2050, pushed by fertility
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what does it matter when were already above carrying capacity, and even most developed countries have stable or growing populations?
Wrong, and wrong--double fail.
Good news (Score:3, Funny)
Some times you just need to start over. I'm well stocked with solver coins, shotgun shells, peanut butter, and tampons. I'll be able to trade for whatever I need in the collapse.
Simple math (Score:5, Interesting)
Land Area of the Earth: 148,940,000 km^2
Population of the Earth 7,000,000,000
Land Area Per Person: 0.02127 km2 -> 21270m^2
So approx 200m x 100m (americans read yds per person)
But then there are mountains, desert, barren lands, asphalt to take into account.
Lets say 100m x 100m per person (roughly 2 football fields). That is the source of your food, your clothes, ....
This is ignoring all other life as that is likely part of the food chain that feeds us.
And that land is used year after year, getting less fertile, limited resources disappearing, getting smaller and smaller as more people appear.
The year is 2012, guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the data started to decouple from predictions, circa year 2000. It seems rather convenient to say that 1970-2000 matches the model, and then simply ignore 2000-onward.
And could we maybe narrow down that prediction a bit, too? Anything between economic collapse (zero) and "unlimited economic growth" is pretty open-ended. (And what the fuck does the term "unlimited economic growth" actually mean, anyway? Money growing on trees?)
Reading predictions of economic doom always brings to mind a quote from "The West Wing" about how economists and futurologists almost always fail to account for technological progress:
BARTLET: You ever read Paul Erlich's book?
TOBY: "The Population Bomb"?
BARTLET: Yeah. He wrote it in 1968. Erlich said it was a fantasy that India would ever feed itself. Then Norman Borlaug comes along. See the problem was wheat is top-heavy. It was falling over on itself and it took up too much space. The dwarf wheat... it was an agricultural revolution that was credited with saving one billion lives.
Re:The year is 2012, guys... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet people still remember who Erlich is, but no one knows who Borlaug was.
This is a gross injustice, that the whiner is so much more popular than the achiever.
unlimited economic growth (Score:4, Insightful)
As soon as I read this I stopped reading.
"However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint."
Firstly, "unlimited economic growth" isn't possible unless we get off this rock (difficult), and even that just opens the timescale up quite a bit. Here is a great (if depressing) discussion prompted by the same book mentioned in the article. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/ [ucsd.edu]
Second, the statement turns what seemed an interesting research conclusion into "the sky is falling, but give us enough money and you'll all be fine." It could be that this wording is different than what is in the actual report, but I can't find a link to it.
A focus on increasing the efficiency with which we use our resources is important, but this sounds like an unrealistic promise in order to obtain funding. This close to the wall we should be focused on how to make a transition to the steady state economy more orderly and less disruptive so that we can keep chugging towards the next breakthrough technology that will get us back into growth for a while, and perhaps eventually off earth so that we can delay the inevitable even more. Allocating large amounts of resources to finding that next breakthrough only gets us relatively little time if it succeeds, and it neglects the risk that if we fail we could have a sudden transition to steady state which would cause a great deal more suffering than is necessary.
Next Ask Slashdot: (Score:3)
How to Survive the Coming Apocalypse?
I'm rather surprised their predictions are not for an earlier date. I have been keeping in the back of my mind the idea of joining a permaculture farm in some tropical locale (I'm in Costa Rica, so it wouldn't be too much of a change), hopefully one with solar power, but I would hate to say goodbye in any permanent sense to the global internet and the benefits of a developed manufacturing society. So, if the world does come to an end, what electronics would be possible to construct? Hand wire-wrapped 8-bit processors? [slashdot.org] What could be done for a screen? Is it possible to manufacture DIY LEDs? What data storage might be possible? Archival "100 year" CDs exist, but what about an archival 100-year CD reader? Is an "Encyclopedia Galactica" [wikipedia.org] possible?
Lastly, is it overly cynical to believe that these goals are more possible than the change necessary to avert this catastrophe?
P.S. It strikes me that there are few things humanity is worse at than predicting the future. However, in a world where the economy can barely survive normal human activities, but which is subject to a multitude of natural disasters, I imagine that the only question concerning a collapse of human society is when we may expect it.
forget it (Score:4, Informative)
20 year predictions are generally little more than glorified guessing.
Think back 20 years. That's 1992. That means no Facebook, no Google, no Slashdot either. You'd run Windows 3.1 or if you are amongst the geekiest of the geeks, Linux 0.1 or so. But you had to roll it on your own because there are no distributions (Slackware started in '93).
Yugoslavia had just started breaking apart. The war in Afghanistan just ended. I'm talking about the soviet invasion.
That's for context. Now on the long-term "visions". We had the Earth Summit [wikipedia.org], so climate change was already on the agenda.
Economically, there was no Euro. The economical collapse of Russia was yet to come, as was the economic crisis of the Asian nations. Had you asked people what the future would bring, they would have likely extrapolated from Black Wednesday [wikipedia.org] the way we would extrapolate from the current financial crisis. Chinas rise to power was just beginning and most people, including experts, wouldn't have predicted it, because it was in late 1992 that the government turned towards even a bit of capitalism.
In healthcare, we didn't yet have bird-flu and pandemics, AIDS was the scare of the day. We also didn't have LASIK, stem cells or any of the other recent advantages. Antibiotics were considered undefeatable by many.
And so on and so forth. There's a lot of big events that a prediction made in 1992 would've missed completely. Yes, we can extrapolate population growth somewhat, but we can't account for inventions in agriculture, for example.
All these posts are funny (Score:3)
What everybody seems to be missing is the simple fact that unsustainable lifestyles are unsustainable, and increasing consumption of finite reserves is unsustainable. It really doesn't matter if it's in 2030, or if the model precisely matches reality (it is only a model after all) the fact that remains is that if you continue on an unsustainable course you will not be able to sustain it!
Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it. Every civilization has collapsed because of some form of unsustainability and then been reduced to a simpler more sustainable way of living. We either design and engineer this 'collapse' into a simpler way of living or we'll have to accept the period of anarchy that will ensue.
Don't worry, the second foundation will take care of it! (that's a joke!)
Why it will never happen. (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics, that is why.
Lets take one resource we heavily depend on: Oil. Suppose we deplete a significant amount of oil wells, what will happen? well laws of supply and demand kick in: as supply becomes shorter, the price of oil goes up. As the price of oil goes up, it will be used progressively less and less since alternatives become more and more attractive in comparison. The whole point of a prices in markets is that there the amount of buyers match the amount of suppliers. Through pricing, the market has a way to ration ALL resources efficiently. This effectively means that we WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL, that we will simply use less of it as it becomes more scarce, but there will always be some available for those willing to pay the price. In fact, we use oil today not because it is the only way to power our cars, but only because it is the cheapest (most efficient).
Another thing they ignore is advances in technology. Take fracking for example, we can extract oil and natural gas from places we never could before. As technology improves, so does our ability to get more and more resources. All these models completely ignore the fact that we will come up with better and more efficient ways to get more resources.
The only thing that can and does stop this natural and efficient rationing of resources are governments.
They put a caviat and say: "if we continue consuming resources at the current pace". Completely overlooking the fact that markets would not allow the current pace to continue when scarcity increases. That is like saying: "If I continue climbing up this mountain at the current pace, I will get to space in a month"
Re:What...No technological advancement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please list below any advancements since 1994 that seriously reduced resource consumption. I can't think of any.
Re: (Score:3)
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1954135 [acm.org]
Here you have an algorithm for reducing the amount of work done at ports, which means less energy consumption or in other words less resource consumption. Assuming, of course, that it does not simply encourage more consumption for the same amount of resources.
The real problem that the world faces is not that technology is increasing resource co
Re: (Score:3)
Why would people advance technology when they can seek rent on existing technology?
Re:FROSTY PISS!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is going to change significantly in the next 18 years, so we will see whether this prediction is accurate.
My guess: It isn't accurate.
Re:FROSTY PISS!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to make a prediction when it's so far off into the future that you know no one will remember you even making it when it doesn't come true. It's like a President promising to put a man on Mars long after his administration is gone. It's an easy promise to make when you know no one is ever going to be able to hold you accountable for it (and even if they tried, you could just blame your successors).
I can predict anything as long as it's far enough off in the future for people to forget it if I'm wrong. Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].
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Re:WAY TO GO, MIT! (Score:5, Funny)
Historically everyone who has predicted the end of the world has been wrong. Some guys twice in a row.
Re:WAY TO GO, MIT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically everyone who has predicted the end of the world has been wrong. Some guys twice in a row.
That really depends on your definition of end of the world. MIT is not forcasting the end of the world. They are forcasting a large population decline. Those have happened several times in history. (Black Death, Small Pox in New World) Citation needed on them never being predicted. Large economic collapses have also occured in the past.
Re:WAY TO GO, MIT! (Score:5, Insightful)
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
Re:WAY TO GO, MIT! (Score:5, Funny)
Except us. Fortunately, I'm already working on my remote outpost. There's a decent water source, and it happens to be a great place for harvesting methane.
In addition, I've got a short guy, and a really big guy who work well together. I also have a few designs for a small coliseum in the center for entertainment.
The Club of Rome saw it coming (Score:5, Informative)
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
Only people who put fingers in their ears and say "LALALA, I can't hear you!".
The Club of Rome made a prediction forty years ago that's coming pretty close to reality. RTFA and take a look at the comparative plots.
Re:WAY TO GO, MIT! (Score:4, Informative)
What you mean is, the people who saw them coming weren't listened to. Many forecasters saw the recent real estate bubble collapsing, e.g. It's true that nobody picked the exact hour, but that's rather irrelevant.
If you say nobody saw the previous disasters coming, I'll ask "How do you know?". I expect they did. (Well, not smallpox in the new world, that was largely germ warfare, and only foreseen by those practicing it.) As to why you don't hear about them, how often to you hear, even now, about those who foresaw the housing bubble? Then why would you expect to find it easy to find prior accurate "prophets of doom"? People don't like to hear bad news, and they also don't like to be reminded that they were wrong. This is a powerful force suppressing historical records of those who gave warnings previously, as well as recently.
P.S.: That the collapse of the Holland "Tulip mania" bubble was foreseen is denoted by the name given to the event in English. I suspect that you would find few references in Dutch that predicted it's collapse.
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And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
This got modded Insightful? It's just plain wrong. You cannot say, categorically, that no one saw them coming. Most people did not. Important People in the news media didn't. But that doesn't mean no one did. For example, the housing and economic crash of 2008 was predicted by many. Few listened, but that doesn't mean it wasn't predicted.
Re:FROSTY PISS!! (Score:4, Informative)
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Global cooling? Never seriously been predicted.
That's not really true, there is no scientist today who denies the reality of ice ages, nor doubts that another one is coming. The only question is how long until it happens. You can find textbooks from the 50s and 60s that make this clear, and discuss potential solutions.
Re:FROSTY PISS!! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'll be old, unable to work, and have no money? How is that "good timing" for you?
An economic collapse won't just let you alone, you know. Actually, the people with kids are more likely to survive (and prosper): they will have children willing and able to support them. You? You'll have a mostly worthless retirement fund. You may not have though this all the way through.
It will suck... (Score:4, Insightful)
...to be old with nobody to look after you.
"Retirement" is only an option when you have savings or someone supporting you like government or family. In a situation like MIT spells out you will not be retiring. Stay healthy.
I'm sure you feel superior referring to the rest of the world as dummies and breeders. But the passion and drive of young people is a key element in making the world a better place. You have failed to renew that resource. You are a cynic. Cynics do not change the world. They just stand to the side and watch while making snide remarks.
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It's (or it should be) kind of shocking the attitudes shown here by these several posters regarding children. Reading some of these cynical/mock threatening comments depresses me.
I'm a parent myself - let me say, it's really hard work. There's very little down time, doing it well requires the bulk of your concentration and resources, and you may never feel like you get out of it what you put into it. But having kids is the ultimate 'pay it forward'. If you want the future to be better, give some young pe
Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Go study population ecology. The population of many/most organisms goes in the same sort of cycles. It's most drastic in insects and micro organisms, but also applies on longer scales to larger creatures.
The population will stay mostly low and constant for a time, and then when the conditions are right, there will be an abundance of resources (food), and the population will spike. Breeding will increase exponentially until the resources aren't enough. Rather than just some of the population dying off to keep balance - the vast, vast majority starves. The population is then less than where it started, and the cycle will repeat with time.
Humans aren't immune to this! It just happens over much longer time scales.
It's not about avoiding breeding completely as a society - it's about using our intellect and breeding a lot less so that we don't all die of starvation because our resource production can't keep up. Unless we can do that, we're really not much smarter than grasshoppers, and no, I'm not an optimist.
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If you want to see this in action, look at suburban deer populations where hunting is illegal. If there's no predator to cull the population, they're instead constrained by resources and disease.
Deer population info, with link to deer population graph: http://deerdamagecontrolfence.com/deer_population.htm [deerdamage...lfence.com]
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I'll try to have as many kids as possible, if I ever start believing in collapse, on the theory that the more I have, the better the chances one or a few will survive whatever the (grim) future may hold.
You are free to step out of my way at any time, by the way. Having already taken the needed steps to avoid inconveniencing my descendants, it would be only a small additional effort to ensure their world will be a tad less poor.
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I think he means the childless will have more money for stockpiling food/ammo than the ones who are currently sinking everything into minivans and designer sports accessories.
Re:Good Timing! (Score:4, Funny)
Screw that, I'm breeding my own personal army.
Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Funny)
Screw that, I'm breeding my own personal army.
Hey, is that you Jango Fett
Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy. Enjoy life, enjoy all those little pleasures that are either immoral or you get fat/sick from them. Drop dead before the onset of senility. QED.
Every single male from my extended family during the last 2 generations has dropped dead from heart attack/stroke way before they turned into barely moving lump of protein requiring 3 nurses, 2 iPads and a mobile toilet to "live". Me, with my pack a cigarets a day - I am expecting the same fate. Long life is not as nice as people think...so no, I have covered that angle (ergo, no need for children to take care of me).
If am wrong, I've covered that angle too - as a scientist and a person with enormous interest in all kinds of subjects I keep my mind very busy, so no senility for me. Thus, when the body really starts giving up but the mind is still clear...well, meet my little friend - 2L bottle with compressed nitrogen and a face mask. You cannot fire me, I quit! (bonus: no (grand) children will be hurt by my action).
Rationality - can't beat it! So join it!
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Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Funny)
They had it upside down. World ends in 5105.
Re:Good Timing! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Informative)
That is why the Christians don't see any point in conservation for the future because they pray for their evil god to destroy the world, so it does not matter if they leave nothing for the next generation.
Wow. Massive generalization much?
Yes, I probably do generalize a bit much. That does not change the fact that the political arm of American Christianity is rabidly anti-conservation for the reason that I stated. They believe that their god will destroy the world before it matters.
Re:Good Timing! (Score:5, Interesting)
No. I am being completely honest. I was born into a fundamentalist christian cult. I know them from the inside out in a way that no outsider ever really can.
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No. I am being completely honest. I was born into a fundamentalist christian cult. I know them from the inside out in a way that no outsider ever really can.
Ditto, and ditto. Those nice Lutherans down the street? That's not who we're talking about. You think Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin were hyping stuff up for the cameras? Maybe they were, but there are a lot of people who believe _exactly_ what those two say they believe. And worse.
Re:politics? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not finding fault with this study, but the conclusion seems to have stepped outside the realm of science and into politics by assuming (at least this is the impression the article gives) that government policy is the only way to limit the growth of our ecological footprint.
The good old freedom-loving alternative has inspired such movies as Mad Max 2.
It's peculiar how science is only OK as long as its conclusions are harmless to powerful interests.
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I'm not finding fault with this study, but the conclusion seems to have stepped outside the realm of science and into politics by assuming (at least this is the impression the article gives) that government policy is the only way to limit the growth of our ecological footprint.
The good old freedom-loving alternative has inspired such movies as Mad Max 2.
It's peculiar how science is only OK as long as its conclusions are harmless to powerful interests.
These models aren't science. They are at best educated guesses, based on mathematical models that are necessarily unable to predict changes to birthrate or sustainability that occur in the future. This isn't a problem with the models or science: the problem is in granting these models more power than they have. I have little doubt that the models are correct: if the present trends stay exactly the same, collapse will happen when they say it will.
The trends never stay the same. Little exercise: create a pop
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Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits,
It's not so exponential if you look more closely. There was an explosion each time a technological revolution happened, then it was ebb and flow until the next one, and ebbs tended to include events like famine and epidemics. No technological revolution was at hand at the right time in a few isolated places such as Easter Island, where societies never rose back to former levels.
Our current explosion coincided with use of fossil fuels. Think of it: the entire history of United States of America has been a hi
Re:Malthus again??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Malthus would have been correct, save for the development of atmospheric nitrogen-fixing processes for making fertilizer.
We are currently using 10 calories worth of energy (mostly from non-renewable petro-chemicals) to make 1 calorie of food --- this is not sustainable, and rising food prices will eventually push the poorest of the poor into starvation, unless there is some sort of intervention.
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Survivors wrote history (Score:5, Informative)
History is an excellent guide. Plenty of societies have been faced with existential challenges. Some of them died. Others fell under the domination of societies that coped better or did not face the same limitations[1]. A very few survived (you can probably count them on your fingers).
History is written by the survivors. Our history is that of the societies that survived. In North America, that recent history is exceptional: over a hundred years of peace within our borders. If by "history" you mean living memory, you are correct. Though if you back just a little farther and consider history from a native perspective, many societies died or fell under domination here. People adapt - but that's no guarantee that our society will be among the survivors.
Market societies are extremely recent, arising only in late 18th century England, before which point the vast majority of the population lived from subsistence agriculture[2]. Market society was then deliberately constructed through government action. How markets are constructed matters very much: they do fail, particularly when it comes to public goods and the environment.
Nor do markets somehow escape the limitations of nature. The rise of industrial capitalism corresponds to the exploitation of fossil fuels. Markets did not create coal and oil: they only discovered them. Would capitalism have been successful if they were not there to be found? One thing capitalism does extremely well is to replace one resource for another. When a resource grows scarce or expensive, something else is substituted. An efficient capitalist economy may not run out of anything: until it runs out of everything[3]. The problem-solving efficiency of markets can actually make the economy more fragile, not less.
[1] Jared Diamond's Collapse examines numerous examples.
[2] See Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation for a fascinating account of this. For a broader view of capitalism before this point, see Fernand Braudel's The Wheels of Commerce (Capitalism & Civilization 15th-18th Century Vol. 2).
[3] Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies argues that a societies develop they realize diminishing marginal returns from adaptation and innovation. When the marginal returns turn negative, they collapse. The only solution he sees is an external energy subsidy - which is where our problem lies.
Re:Malthus again??? (Score:4, Informative)
Read Tainter's [wikipedia.org] "Collapse of Complex Civilizations".
Yes, it's happened and yes, it will happen again.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll never understand so-called environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids. I can think of nothing quite so environmentally irresponsible...
-S
Just how many "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids" are there? You sound like you made a study of this, what was the conclusion? That we are being over-run by the children of "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids"?
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We actually are not overpopulated. What we are is under energized. With enough nuclear and solar power, most of the fossil fuels can be used for fertilizer or synthesized. Sea water can be desalinated and the worlds aquifers can be replenished. 7 to 10 billion is easily sustainable if we were not so god damn retarded about solution to energy scarcity. Hell, if we got radical enough with vertical hydroponic food production we might even be able to support a hundred billion humans indefinitely.
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Not this shit again. The US government has been giving carte blanche to companies for a decade now. Companies have a ton of freedom. The result, more oppression instead of less. We have private industries running prisons. Guess what? Elected judges have to justify any acquittals now or else they will lose their campaign donations. It isn't the USG who wants to see a pothead put away for life, it is the company who gets the bucks for warehousing the pothead who wants to keep their beds full.
Your compl
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1. Liebig's Law of the Minimum. It only takes one critical resource failure to slow the entire train.
2. Ah, the 'many advancements in technology since the 1970's'. Still using fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy production (see No. 1). Where's your personal nuclear power plant / fuel cell? Where, in fact, is your gen III nuc plant - the one with 1970's technology? Got fusion? Seen a Thorium Cycle Reactor recently?
Cornucopians always amuse me. I wonder how many of them take apart their i