Limits to Growth of Resource Use, Population, Pollution Urged Again

Three systems analysts, building on their 20-year-old controversial but influential study, "Limits to Growth," have now written "Beyond the Limits," a study that advocates the concept of enough: enough growth to achieve a sustainable society, but no more. Unless present consumption of materials and energy, population growth, and pollution are scaled back—and fairly soon, they contend—the consequences for the world economy within another few decades will be dire. Economists and industrialists take issue with this. According to the "Beyond the Limits" analysts, human society is now consuming resources and producing wastes at rates Earth can no longer sustain. These physical limits are being "overshot" in spite of improved technology and despite more public and political awareness of environmental issues. Using an updated system dynamics computer model (World3) and more extensive data, the analysts again predict the possibility of global economic collapse. But, they argue, as they did in their first study, s...