2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

[Paul Mobbs]

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I tried ordering Jorgan Randers new book a week or so ago and it's not 
available (in the UK) until the end of June. Here's a review from Scientific 
American.

Given mainstream environmentalism's aversion to dealing with the "limits" 
issue, the fact that the projections of 40 years ago are still on track -- 
despite the protestations of neoclassical economists -- should be a wake-up 
call for all.

P.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=apocalypse%2Dsoon%2Dhas%2Dcivilization%2Dpassed%2Dthe%2Denvironmental%2Dpoint%2Dof%2Dno%2Dreturn

Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No 
Return?

Although there is an urban legend that the world will end this year based 
on a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar, some researchers think a 40-
year-old computer program that predicts a collapse of socioeconomic order 
and massive drop in human population in this century may be on target

Madhusree Mukerjee, Scientific American, 23rd May 2012


Remember how Wile E. Coyote, in his obsessive pursuit of the Road Runner, 
would fall off a cliff? The hapless predator ran straight out off the edge, 
stopped in midair as only an animated character could, looked beneath him 
in an eye-popping moment of truth, and plummeted straight down into a puff 
of dust. Splat! Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
computer model called World3 warned of such a possible course for human 
civilization in the 21st century. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 
1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global 
industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course 
in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth 
skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed 
for overshoot—and a splat that could kill billions.

Don't look now but we are running in midair, a new book asserts. In 2052: A 
Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (Chelsea Green Publishing), Jorgen 
Randers of the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and one of the 
original World3 modelers, argues that the second half of the 21st century 
will bring us near apocalypse in the form of severe global warming. Dennis 
Meadows, professor emeritus of systems policy at the University of New 
Hampshire who headed the original M.I.T. team and revisited World3 in 1994 
and 2004, has an even darker view. The 1970s program had yielded a variety 
of scenarios, in some of which humanity manages to control production and 
population to live within planetary limits (described as Limits to Growth). 
Meadows contends that the model's sustainable pathways are no longer within 
reach because humanity has failed to act accordingly.

Instead, the latest global data are tracking one of the most alarming 
scenarios, in which these variables increase steadily to reach a peak and 
then suddenly drop in a process called collapse. In fact, "I see collapse 
happening already," he says. "Food per capita is going down, energy is 
becoming more scarce, groundwater is being depleted." Most worrisome, 
Randers notes, greenhouse gases are being emitted twice as fast as oceans 
and forests can absorb them. Whereas in 1972 humans were using 85 percent 
of the regenerative capacity of the biosphere to support economic 
activities such as growing food, producing goods and assimilating 
pollutants, the figure is now at 150 percent—and growing.

Randers's ideas most closely resemble a World3 scenario in which energy 
efficiency and renewable energy stave off the worst effects of climate change 
until after 2050. For the coming few decades, Randers predicts, life on 
Earth will carry on more or less as before. Wealthy economies will continue 
to grow, albeit more slowly as investment will need to be diverted to deal 
with resource constraints and environmental problems, which thereby will 
leave less capital for creating goods for consumption. Food production will 
improve: increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause plants to 
grow faster, and warming will open up new areas such as Siberia to 
cultivation. Population will increase, albeit slowly, to a maximum of about 
eight billion near 2040. Eventually, however, floods and desertification will 
start reducing farmland and therefore the availability of grain. Despite 
humanity's efforts to ameliorate climate change, Randers predicts that its 
effects will become devastating sometime after mid-century, when global 
warming will reinforce itself by, for instance, igniting fires that turn 
forests into net emitters rather than absorbers of carbon. "Very likely, we 
will have war long before we get there," Randers adds grimly. He expects 
that mass migration from lands rendered unlivable will lead to localized 
armed conflicts.

Graham Turner of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research 
Organization fears that collapse could come even earlier, but due to peak 
oil rather than climate change. After comparing the various scenarios 
generated by World3 against recent data on population, industrial output 
and other variables, Turner and, separately, the PBL Netherlands 
Environmental Assessmeng Agency, conclude that the global system is closely 
following a business-as-usual output curve. In this model run the economy 
continues to grow as expected until about 2015, but then falters because 
nonrenewable resources such as oil become ever more expensive to extract. 
"Not that we're running out of any of these resources," Turner explains. 
"It's that as you try to get to unconventional sources such as under deep 
oceans, it takes a lot more energy to extract each unit of energy." To keep 
up oil supply, the model predicts that society will divert investment from 
agriculture, causing a drop in food production. In this scenario, 
population peaks around 2030 at between seven and eight billion and then 
decreases sharply, evening out at about four billion in 2100.

- -- 

.

"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burrough, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')

Paul's book, "Energy Beyond Oil", is out now!
For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ebo/

Read my 'essay' weblog, "Ecolonomics", at:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ecolonomics/

Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
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