Revisiting our limits (To Growth)

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Club of Rome’s famous report The Limits to Growth, which developed a number of possible trajectories of human development from 1972 until 2100. Most of these scenarios projected ‘overshoot and collapse’: rapid industrial production, resource consumption and increasing pollution emissions overshoot biophysical planetary boundaries by around 2050, leading to a collapse in food production and population by end of the century.

The frightening truth is that in 2012 many of its findings are still valid and we remain on the same potentially catastrophic pathway.

The report also developed stabilisation scenarios, and these remain potential future pathways. To avoid overshoot and collapse, according to the report, it is necessary to stabilise our economies, currently based on increasing material through-put; to slow and stabilise population growth; and to reduce pollution levels, all before mid-21st century. The two latter goals are relatively uncontroversial in most parts of the world, but even questioning the need for on-going economic growth is still highly politically sensitive.

Forty years have passed since the publication of The Limits to Growth. If the models are correct – and so far they look that way – business-as-usual is not an option: we do not have another 40 years to waste before taking action and changing course.

Still, the debate about the limits of economic growth has arisen once more, especially in Europe. In France, the movement debating these issues goes by the name “La Decroissance” -- literally, “De-growth”, referring to the controlled downscaling of production. This political and counter-cultural movement, which stands for the egalitarian use of global resources, is barely known outside the Francophone world, but has nonetheless produced valuable texts such as La Décroissance: 10 questions pour comprendre et en débattre (“De-growth: 10 questions to understand the debate”). More