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Human society is set to collapse over the next two decades if there is not a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported
In this report – published in the bestselling book “The limits of growth“(1972) – a team of scientists from MIT argued that industrial civilization was doomed to collapse if businesses and governments continued to pursue continued economic growth, regardless of the costs. The researchers predicted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal well-being would collapse.
The report’s most infamous scenario – the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario – predicted that global economic growth would peak around the 2040s and then experience a sharp slowdown, along with world population, food availability, and natural resources. This impending “collapse” would not be the end of the human race, but rather a societal turning point that would see the standard of living drop around the world for decades, the team wrote.
Related: How much time does humanity have left?
So what is the outlook for the company today, nearly half a century after MIT researchers shared their prognosis? Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic systems analysis researcher at consultancy KPMG, decided to find out. In the November 2020 issue of Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology, Herrington delved into research she began as a graduate student at Harvard University earlier that year, analyzing predictions of “limits to growth” as well as the most recent real-world data.
Herrington found that the current state of the world – measured using 10 different variables, including population, fertility rates, Pollution levels, food production and industrial production – very closely aligned with two of the scenarios proposed in 1972, namely the BAU scenario and one called Comprehensive Technology (CT), in which technological advances help reduce pollution and increase food supplies, even when natural resources are tapped apart.
While the CT scenario results in less shock to world population and personal well-being, the lack of natural resources still leads to a point where economic growth declines sharply – in other words, a sudden collapse of industrial society. .
“[The BAU] and the CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade, ”Herrington wrote in his study. “Both scenarios therefore indicate that it is not possible to continue as usual, that is to say to pursue continuous growth.
The good news is that it is not too late to avoid both of these scenarios and put the company on the right track for an alternative – the Stabilized World (SW) scenario. This path begins as the BAU and CT routes do, with population, pollution and economic growth increasing in tandem as natural resources decrease. The difference arises when humans deliberately decide to limit economic growth on their own, before lack of resources forces them to do so.
“The SW scenario assumes that in addition to technological solutions, global societal priorities change,” Herrington wrote. “A change in values and policies results in, among other things, a small desired family size, full availability of birth control and a deliberate choice to limit industrial production and prioritize health and welfare services. education. “
On a SW scenario graph, industrial growth and world population begin to stabilize soon after this change in values. Food availability continues to increase to meet the needs of the world’s population; pollution decreases and practically disappears; and the depletion of natural resources is also starting to stabilize. The collapse of society is completely avoided.
This scenario may seem like a fantasy, especially since atmospheric carbon dioxide levels soar to record highs. But the study suggests that a deliberate change of course is still possible.
Herrington explained to Vice.com the rapid development and deployment of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic is a testament to human ingenuity in the face of global crises. It is entirely possible, Herrington said, that humans react in the same way to the climate crisis – if we make a deliberate societal choice to do so.
“It is not yet too late for humanity to deliberately change course to significantly alter the trajectory of [the] the future, ”Herrington concluded in his study. “In fact, humanity can either choose its own limit or reach an imposed limit at some point, at which point a decline in human well-being will have become inevitable. “
Learn more about the report on Vice.com.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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