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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."
From the original source of garbage in garbage out.
On the one hand, people have been predicting the imminent collapse of civilization for quite a while now with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, our high-tech society is basically a house of cards and it has to collapse sooner or later.
Forrester's group, btw, are the same folks who produced the Club of Rome-funded "Limits to Growth" study in the early '70s, which also predicted serious trouble around 2030. You can choose to read this as consistency, good initial assumptions, or simply a pig-headed insistence on sticking to his original premises rather than admit error, as you wish.
Were they using SimCity, Civilization, or simply the Sims to predict what is glaringly obvious.
i can imagine the Civilization model:
World ends in 2030 when Bismarck conquers Spain!
Please list below any advancements since 1994 that seriously reduced resource consumption. I can't think of any.
The same frauds are making the same claims in the same ways for 50 years. They are physical scientists who don't understand economics, with new technology and substitutes leading to ever-increasing quality and length of life -- sans goverment intervention.
Theodore Roosevelt decried the coming "timber crisis" because rotting railroad ties would soon consume all lumber production at current replacement rates. Then someone invented using creosote coatings.
Yes, you can predict this will happen. That is Julian Simon's theory, used to make predictions which come true over and over and over again. Said computer models don't include millions of scientists and engineers in a free society working to satisfy mass wants for profits, which call into existence new tech all the time. This is just the latest in sub-sentient drooling idiocy, disproven again and again and again.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Our societies are now based on rampant consumerism and the freedom of the individual to do whatever they want, so long as it's not illegal and they can pay for it. As a result, we have gone from a few hundred million to seven billion people within a century. If we value our natural world, we will find some way to check this growth sooner rather than later.
Is they assume that we will go on like business is usual. As soon as scarcity of a resource gets past a point we go and find alternatives. The Prius came popular at US gas went over $4.00 a gallon back in 2008. Then when prices went down the Prius wasn't popular and now it is getting popular again at $4.00. For US consumers $4.00 a gallon is a price enough to evoke change in behavior and look for alternatives.
We tend not to deplete a resource if possible, but when it gets scarce enough we go for alternatives. If pork or cattle get to expensive we go with less resource needed chickens or turkeys.
Usually the things that us humans kill off forever, are things that at least in our short term mindset see are things that are not directly useful for us. We don't see a drop in cattle. But we see a drop in wolves, as they are in competition with us for our cattle... So we kill the wolves, they are not really a direct resource for us so they killed. As well as lot of bugs and other animals. I am not saying this is a good thing we should work hard to preserve nature for it is better in the long term. But as human nature when scarcity happens we change our behavior, and we wont change our behavior until we feel the effect of scarcity.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The wonderful thing about this prediction is that it is testable.
Nothing is going to change significantly in the next 18 years, so we will see whether this prediction is accurate.
My guess: It isn't accurate.
Yeah. Nothing says "sustainable welfare state" and "stable retirement" like having no children.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So you'll be old, unable to work, and have no money? How is that "good timing" for you?
An economic collapse won't just let you alone, you know. Actually, the people with kids are more likely to survive (and prosper): they will have children willing and able to support them. You? You'll have a mostly worthless retirement fund. You may not have though this all the way through.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
As soon as I read this I stopped reading.
"However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint."
Firstly, "unlimited economic growth" isn't possible unless we get off this rock (difficult), and even that just opens the timescale up quite a bit. Here is a great (if depressing) discussion prompted by the same book mentioned in the article. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/
Second, the statement turns what seemed an interesting research conclusion into "the sky is falling, but give us enough money and you'll all be fine." It could be that this wording is different than what is in the actual report, but I can't find a link to it.
A focus on increasing the efficiency with which we use our resources is important, but this sounds like an unrealistic promise in order to obtain funding. This close to the wall we should be focused on how to make a transition to the steady state economy more orderly and less disruptive so that we can keep chugging towards the next breakthrough technology that will get us back into growth for a while, and perhaps eventually off earth so that we can delay the inevitable even more. Allocating large amounts of resources to finding that next breakthrough only gets us relatively little time if it succeeds, and it neglects the risk that if we fail we could have a sudden transition to steady state which would cause a great deal more suffering than is necessary.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I'm not finding fault with this study, but the conclusion seems to have stepped outside the realm of science and into politics by assuming (at least this is the impression the article gives) that government policy is the only way to limit the growth of our ecological footprint.
The good old freedom-loving alternative has inspired such movies as Mad Max 2.
It's peculiar how science is only OK as long as its conclusions are harmless to powerful interests.
These models aren't science. They are at best educated guesses, based on mathematical models that are necessarily unable to predict changes to birthrate or sustainability that occur in the future. This isn't a problem with the models or science: the problem is in granting these models more power than they have. I have little doubt that the models are correct: if the present trends stay exactly the same, collapse will happen when they say it will.
The trends never stay the same. Little exercise: create a population (or economic) model for human civilization using any time in history. It will predict a peak population (or population explosion) at some other point in history (usually a couple hundreds years from the chosen time). Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits, because these models are inherently unable to predict changes in the trends: they can only be based on current or historical trends, and those always change unpredictably.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
...to be old with nobody to look after you.
"Retirement" is only an option when you have savings or someone supporting you like government or family. In a situation like MIT spells out you will not be retiring. Stay healthy.
I'm sure you feel superior referring to the rest of the world as dummies and breeders. But the passion and drive of young people is a key element in making the world a better place. You have failed to renew that resource. You are a cynic. Cynics do not change the world. They just stand to the side and watch while making snide remarks.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Give that man a Prize!
Greece isn't in the toilet because the people with jobs and lived withing their means are consuming. It's in the shitter because the government supported those who are not by giving them free things, running up their debt and over all behaving like a teenager with a credit card.
Same in the U.S. The President's own numbers show the U.S. economy essentially grinding to a halt in about 15 years due to the crushing federal debt.
Again, it's not because I own two cars, a big house and set my AC to 74.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'll never understand so-called environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids. I can think of nothing quite so environmentally irresponsible...
-S
Just how many "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids" are there? You sound like you made a study of this, what was the conclusion? That we are being over-run by the children of "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids"?
May you live in interesting times.
Historically everyone who has predicted the end of the world has been wrong. Some guys twice in a row.
That really depends on your definition of end of the world. MIT is not forcasting the end of the world. They are forcasting a large population decline. Those have happened several times in history. (Black Death, Small Pox in New World) Citation needed on them never being predicted. Large economic collapses have also occured in the past.
Go study population ecology. The population of many/most organisms goes in the same sort of cycles. It's most drastic in insects and micro organisms, but also applies on longer scales to larger creatures.
The population will stay mostly low and constant for a time, and then when the conditions are right, there will be an abundance of resources (food), and the population will spike. Breeding will increase exponentially until the resources aren't enough. Rather than just some of the population dying off to keep balance - the vast, vast majority starves. The population is then less than where it started, and the cycle will repeat with time.
Humans aren't immune to this! It just happens over much longer time scales.
It's not about avoiding breeding completely as a society - it's about using our intellect and breeding a lot less so that we don't all die of starvation because our resource production can't keep up. Unless we can do that, we're really not much smarter than grasshoppers, and no, I'm not an optimist.
It's easy to make a prediction when it's so far off into the future that you know no one will remember you even making it when it doesn't come true. It's like a President promising to put a man on Mars long after his administration is gone. It's an easy promise to make when you know no one is ever going to be able to hold you accountable for it (and even if they tried, you could just blame your successors).
I can predict anything as long as it's far enough off in the future for people to forget it if I'm wrong. Obligatory xkcd.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Yet people still remember who Erlich is, but no one knows who Borlaug was.
This is a gross injustice, that the whiner is so much more popular than the achiever.
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Not this shit again. The US government has been giving carte blanche to companies for a decade now. Companies have a ton of freedom. The result, more oppression instead of less. We have private industries running prisons. Guess what? Elected judges have to justify any acquittals now or else they will lose their campaign donations. It isn't the USG who wants to see a pothead put away for life, it is the company who gets the bucks for warehousing the pothead who wants to keep their beds full.
Your complete platform which has been argued and modded down into oblivion more times than I can count is just plain wrong. Had a single shred of roman_mir's garbage actually hold true, the late 1800s until 1930s in the US would have been a Utopia for all, because during those times, companies ran the show, and the US government was just there to provide militias when the Pinkertons couldn't do the job.
We *need* government to intervene. Otherwise the only thing that will be looked at with populations is how much money can we milk from them, this quarter, next quarter and the future be damned. If we let companies run the show, the only energy sources our grandkids will have will be coal and oil, and they will spend most of their salaries trying to get it. However, if we bite the bullet and start making modern reactors, the oil crisis can be mitigated, something private industry does not want.
Economics, that is why.
Lets take one resource we heavily depend on: Oil. Suppose we deplete a significant amount of oil wells, what will happen? well laws of supply and demand kick in: as supply becomes shorter, the price of oil goes up. As the price of oil goes up, it will be used progressively less and less since alternatives become more and more attractive in comparison. The whole point of a prices in markets is that there the amount of buyers match the amount of suppliers. Through pricing, the market has a way to ration ALL resources efficiently. This effectively means that we WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL, that we will simply use less of it as it becomes more scarce, but there will always be some available for those willing to pay the price. In fact, we use oil today not because it is the only way to power our cars, but only because it is the cheapest (most efficient).
Another thing they ignore is advances in technology. Take fracking for example, we can extract oil and natural gas from places we never could before. As technology improves, so does our ability to get more and more resources. All these models completely ignore the fact that we will come up with better and more efficient ways to get more resources.
The only thing that can and does stop this natural and efficient rationing of resources are governments.
They put a caviat and say: "if we continue consuming resources at the current pace". Completely overlooking the fact that markets would not allow the current pace to continue when scarcity increases. That is like saying: "If I continue climbing up this mountain at the current pace, I will get to space in a month"
1. Liebig's Law of the Minimum. It only takes one critical resource failure to slow the entire train.
2. Ah, the 'many advancements in technology since the 1970's'. Still using fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy production (see No. 1). Where's your personal nuclear power plant / fuel cell? Where, in fact, is your gen III nuc plant - the one with 1970's technology? Got fusion? Seen a Thorium Cycle Reactor recently?
Cornucopians always amuse me. I wonder how many of them take apart their iPhone looking for the pixie dust.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is it just me or should all these Green/malthusian/progressive idiots be de-tenured and sacked so some one who wants to crate can get paid. I am so sick of Global Warming, Climate Change, weather Wierding, Club of Rome Socialist crap!
None of these idiots would know an opportunity if it bit them.
The only thing wrong is these types breed and go to good universities to tell us this never ending immature nonsense
MFG, omb