Graph showing various lines
Business, Environment

The Quadra Project: The Club of Rome

This year, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of The Club of Rome’s 1972 publication of The Limits of Growth, a book that attempted to warn humanity about the consequences of excessive use of the world’s resources. The genesis of the idea came two years earlier from an Italian industrialist, Aurelio Peccei, who invited to Rome a group of scientists, businessmen, academics and diplomats to explore how they might address his concerns.

After compiling as much information as they could about the rate of resource depletion, they decided to commission four distinguished computer system scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to model the anticipated consequences of various scenarios. The resulting book, The Limits of Growth, became an international best-seller that provoked considerable controversy.

The Club of Rome outlined three options. First, if present growth trends were to continue in five key areas—population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion—growth limits would be reached sometime within 100 years, with the most probable result being “a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” Second, “It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future.” It went on to add that, “The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.” Third, “If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.”

The computer modelling for the three options made predictions using 12 future scenarios. By tracking per-capita consumption, population, industrial production and agricultural production, and then by plotting these factors against resource depletion and levels of pollution, each scenario could be matched to the various social interventions that might mitigate the likelihood of a large-scale catastrophe. With no intervention, the trends suggested that a serious ecological crises would develop early in the 21st century, with a global temperature increase of approximately 2°C by 2052.

Most of these predictions in 1972 were dismissed by critics as “outlandish”. Industrialization and capitalistic enterprises were surging, promising to dwarf the threats of socialism and communism. America had just landed men on the Moon, optimism was rampant, and U.S. president Ronald Reagan confidently declared, “There are no great limits to growth, when men and women are free to follow their dreams.” 

Well, dreams that are disconnected from reality have a way of becoming nightmares. Most recent reviews of The Limits of Growth have found the 1972 predictions to be remarkably accurate. The five categories of concern identified by The Club of Rome 50 years ago have become much more defined, but the basic forecast is supported. New studies from 2020 have examined quantitative information from such factors as population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and humanity’s ecological footprint. The conclusion is that continued economic growth is not sustainable under the original “business as usual” model, and that if major reductions to the consumption of resources are not undertaken, economic growth will peak and then rapidly decline by around 2040.

Technically, The Limits to Growth did not predict what was going to happen; it outlined scenarios that might occur depending on our ability to recognize the risks and to modify our collective behaviour. The first option, the “standard run,” was based on “business as usual,” with no intervention, and it forecast serious ecological crises just about where we are now.

The second option allowed for technological advances that might double human access to resources. But, without substantial changes to our behaviour, this option only delayed the crisis by a few decades. Of the 12 computer scenarios, 10 tried to estimate the effects of individual initiatives in combination with recycling, pollution controls, soil restoration, stabilizing population, restricting economic growth, and increased industrial efficiency by eliminating planned obsolescence. Unfortunately, only a few of these interventions have been partially implemented, and none on a global scale, while others are not even being considered. Meanwhile, 50 years later, the human population has doubled from nearly 4 billion to nearly 8 billion, global GDP has more than quadrupled from $21 trillion to $87 trillion, economic disparity has increased, and the list of other threats has expanded to include climate change, ocean heating and acidification, a disturbed nitrogen/phosphorus cycle, micro-plastic pollution, endocrine disrupters, biodiversity collapse, pandemic risks from an intensified of human-nature interface, and a whole new generation of persistent “forever chemical” pollutants.

While the United Nations through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has now replaced the The Club of Rome as an expression of concern and conscience, the message has remained ostensibly the same. What we are collectively doing is “madness”. “Insanity” and “suicidal” are other words being used.

In 1896 we were warned by the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, about the risks of global warming from rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The oil companies knew by 1968 what would be the ultimate effect of continuing to burn fossil fuels. And, sadly, a half a century after The Club of Rome published The Limits of Growth, the “outlandish” seems to be arriving on schedule.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra

Top photo credit: Reconstruction of Figure 35. page 124 of The Limits to Growth (1972) by YaguraStation (Own Work) via Wikimedia (CC BY SA, 4.0 License)

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency: