MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030

suraj.sun writes "A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from 'global economic collapse' and 'precipitous population decline' if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace. The study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without 'drastic measures for environmental protection,' the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash."

Comments

Re:Club of Rome Study 2

[FTWinston]

Or market distortions like people not being able to produce enough energy, due to demand outpacing technological progress. Sure, the system will still "self-correct," but in that scenario, self-correction can include drastic reduction in the number of people.

Re:Again...

[dasunt]

Maybe a 2 child/couple policy would meet less resistance.

Er, have you looked at the numbers? US fertility rate among native-born US citizens tends to be at below the replacement rate of 2.1. Immigration tends to drive US population growth rates.

Europe is already below replacement rates in their fertility levels. 1.59.

Numbers and sources can be found at Wikipedia.

If you want to downsize the US or EU's population, you could do it through preventing immigration, and the population would drop naturally. But there are some pretty severe downsides to closing off immigration, and it only pushes the problem to somewhere else.

p