Limits to Growth author: climate change, peak oil symptoms, not problem
March 1st, 2010 by Jim JustDr. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, gave a talk in Davos, Switzerland in September 2009 at the World Resources Forum. Gail Tverberg at The Oil Drum has posted an “approximate” transcript.
Here’s the takeaway thought. Climate change and energy scarcity – the two greatest challenges of our time, perhaps in human history – are symptoms. The problem is physical growth, continued population expansion, continued increase in material standards of living, in a world that has finite limits.
Meadows points out the probability of the problem of physical growth being addressed is 100%. What cannot be known is whether it will be addressed voluntarily or involuntarily. Collapse – meaning that material standards of living, peace, trust in the government, and other things fall, out of control – is a possibility:
The same thing with collapse. I know that the current growth in population and in material use cannot continue–absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions.
The longer we wait to do social measures, like birth control, or voluntary simplicity, the more likely it will be that physical measures will cause this decline.