In the late 80's is was studying process engineering with specialization on environmental technology and process analysis. This was a somewhat unusual topic to study that time and place, because the official line these days was "environmental protection is to expensive right now, and these trees over there are dying of something, but it's got nothing to do with pollution", and the inofficial line was "lets fake another environmental report to pretend everything is fine". The place was Dresden, German Democratic Republic, from your point of view "behind" the steel curtain.
A professor recommended me a book that wasn't even officially available in the GDR but they had one in the faculty library. It was nearly twenty years old:
The Limits to Growth
A Report to The Club of Rome (1972),
by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III
Some of you might have heard of it, some of you not. Lets see ...
That's the
Club of Rome (CoR) how they see them self:
The Club of Rome is a global think tank and centre of innovation and initiative.
As a non-profit, non govermental organisation (NGO), it brings together scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents who are convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies.
If you have never heart about the CoR and don't trust them, it might help to have a look at the list of members, both active and honorary ones, for instance there is listed Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of Germany, and i can assure you if we ever had a intelligent and responsible one, it was him ... but back to the topic.
In the late 60's they created a mathematical/computer model to investigate the development of mankind for the next 100 years, especially the factors industrialization, population growth, nutrition, environment and resource consumption. The limits to growth was a description of this model and it's results. It's main conclusions where
- If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.
It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.
A lot of people took that book serious, unfortunately some scientists used the chance to distinguish themself from the rest by explaining why this cant be true, this again was excellent material for some politicians to explain the people why there will be no limits to growth ever and so on and so on .. you know the story. In short: NOTHING happened (or at least not much. The only area where the CoR really got some influence is international see law).
One thing is important to understand: this was no "on January 1st 2070 is the end of the world" crap, this was a very simplified (but very sophisticated) model of human society and mankind to see some trends and not to make exact predictions 50 or more years into the future.
To quote context.org:
"Grow or die," goes the old economic maxim. But in 1972 a team of systems scientists and computer modelers challenged conventional wisdom with a ground-breaking study that warned that there were limits - especially environmental limits - to how "big" human civilization and its appetite for resources could get. Beyond a certain point, they said in effect, the maxim could very well be "grow and die."
Why do i excavate that old stuff, one might ask? Because its still as relevant as it can be. But i see i small chance that some more people at least start thinking about the problems .. if Katrina and Rita where good for anything, then for make lots of people realize: there will not always be as much oil as we want/need. But the rabbit hole goes deeper .. much deeper. We have to realize that there are limits. Our whole economy is based on the assumption that there are no limits at all. Every strategy is based on extension, sell more, or sell a more refined product .. no buck has been made so far with producing or selling less. And that's the whole reason why only a few people actually believe in the theories of the CoR: the others are frightened of the consequences.
Of course we can continue to ignore the problem, pretend there will be some wonderful technology pop up out of nowhere to solve all of our energy problems, and maybe we have to consider nuking Africa a bit to control population growth, and for things like air pollution and global warming, some braniac at MIT will find a solution for that as well ..
But if we hit one of these limits, the smallest thing that can happen is a economical collaps. It's more likely that whole societies will collapse as well, and the so called "western civilization" will virtually disappear. worst scenario will be wars about controlling resources .. and we have enough firepower to wipe mankind completely off this planet, several times.
That's a exaggeration, you say. From the very bottom of my heart i wish you where right. But i do not think so.
Are you willing to take the red pill?