Limits to Growth:
Book Review to Mark the 35th
Anniversary of Publication.
Reviewed by Michael H. Smith and edited by Karlson ‘Charlie’ Hargroves,
The Natural Edge Project
Sept 2007
Acknowledgements
This review was initially undertaken as part of Michael Smith’s PhD research and has been further
developed by The Natural Edge Project team (TNEP). As standard practice for TNEP book
reviews, the lead authors of the Limits to Growth series and colleagues in the field were invited to
undertake a peer-review. Contribution by the following mentors have been gratefully received and
included in the final text (see also acknowledgements within): Dr Dennis Meadows (Co-Author,
Limits to Growth), Professor Jorgen Randers (policy analyst and President Emeritus of the
Norwegian School of Management), Alan AtKisson (AtKisson Inc), and Professor Stephen Dovers
(Australian National University).
We are particularly grateful to Dr Meadows for his invaluable mentoring throughout this process,
and his kind words:
‘The team from TNEP has invested a great deal of time in reading the relevant
literature, thinking about the issues, and writing their conclusions. It is an original
and useful analysis.’
Dr Dennis Meadows, Co-Author Limits to Growth.
Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Introduction
We have a confession to make: Before reviewing the original 1972 publication Limits to Growth and
its sequels – the 20 Year Update “Beyond the Limits”, and Limits to Growth - The Thirty Year
Update (2004) we had never read these books in full. It is a difficult thing to publicly admit after
producing an international book on sustainability that has forwards written by many friends of the
Limits to Growth team such as Alan AtKisson, Hunter Lovins and Amory Lovins. It is especially
difficult to admit because our book The Natural Advantage of Nations1 has been chosen by our
mutual publishers as one of the three books to be promoted at the back of The Limits to Growth The Thirty Year Update.
Perhaps our admission helps to demonstrate how successful those who discredit the Limits to
Growth books have been.
We, like many people, grew up hearing media dismiss the Limits to Growth work because they
claimed its predictions had not come true. Many in the media claimed the authors were anti-growth
and had underestimated humanity’s capacity to innovate to solve these problems - they were
successfully painted as pessimists. Our generation has grown up watching documentaries by David
Suzuki, and have experienced environmental education in our schools. We know the magnitude of
problems including climate change, ecosystem collapse, deforestation, rising global inequality, etc
and we are looking for solutions. This may explain our generation’s resonance with books like the
Club of Rome Report - Factor 4 Doubling Wealth and Halving Resource Usage,2 Cradle to Cradle,3
and Natural Capitalism4.
Having read the three Limits to Growth books cover to cover, we were wrong to believe media
claims about the book Limits to Growth and its sequels. Indeed, we believe the original 1972 Limits
to Growth book is one of the most misunderstood books of our time. We suspect that these
misunderstandings and assumptions have stopped many like us, from taking the time to read it.
We will now take the opportunity to consider what we believe to be the three principal
misunderstandings about the original publication Limits to Growth (1972), and how the authors have
addressed these misunderstandings in their subsequent updates: Beyond the Limits (1992), and
The Thirty Year Update (2004).
We hope that through this consideration, others will realise the need to revisit this seminal
publication – in full.
1
2
3
4
Hargroves, K. and Smith, M. (2005) The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21 st
Century, Earthscan Publications, London.
von Weizsacker, E. (1997) Factor Four: Doubling Wealth and Halving Resource Usage, Earthscan Publications, London.
McDonough, W. and Braungart, M. (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things, North Point Press, US.
Hawken, P., Lovins, A.B. and Lovins, L.H. (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Earthscan Publications,
London.
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Common Misunderstanding #1: The 1972 Limits to Growth book
predicted that resources like oil would run out soon. Clearly oil has not
run out
The Limits to Growth model was not used to make predictions about oil availability. Oil was not a
separate variable in the model, so World3 (the authors’ computer model) could not be used to make
predictions of any sort about current or future oil availability. The Limits to Growth team knew this,
and hence never made such forecasts.
Matthew Simmons, respected energy expert and advisor to the US Bush Administration and
founder of Simmons & Company International (the world’s largest energy investment banking firm),
describes well what the original Limits to Growth book actually said on this issue. ‘After reading The
Limits to Growth, I was amazed. Nowhere in the book was there any mention of running out of
anything by 2000. Instead, the book’s concern was entirely focused on what the world might look
like in one hundred years time. There was not one sentence or one single word written about an oil
shortage, or limit to any specific resource, by the year 2000.’5
As the authors of Limits to Growth - Thirty Year Update explain,
The term [Limits to Growth] is often misunderstood, and it is typically used today in a very
simplistic way. Most critics believe that our concerns about limits result from a belief that fossil
fuel or some other resource will soon be exhausted… Our concern about collapse does not
come from belief that the world is about to exhaust the planet’s stocks of energy and raw
materials. Every scenario produced by World3 shows that the world in the year 2100 still has a
significant fraction of the resources that it had in the year 1900. In analysing World3 projections
our concern rather arises from the growing cost of exploiting the globe’s sources and sinks – the
world’s ecosystems, air and oceans… In fact our apprehension is more subtle, we worry that
current policies will produce global overshoot and collapse through ineffective efforts to
anticipate and cope with ecological limits… We failed in our earlier books to convey this concern
in a lucid manner. We failed totally to get the concept of ‘overshoot’ accepted as a legitimate
concern for public debate.
This Thirty Year Update is comprehensive in communicating the problem of ecological overshoot
and ecological thresholds. One of the biggest impediments to progress on sustainability is that few
decision makers appreciate the scale of the problem. The Limits to Growth 20 and 30 year updates
have been two of the most honest books ever written on the extent to which humanity has already
overshot the ecological limits of the planet’s ecosystems. Both updates synthesize the evidence
that today humankind has already overshot the ecological limits through over-fishing, deforestation,
consuming fossil fuels, phosphate pollution in rivers and lakes (leading to algae blooms), and
unsustainable use of soils (leading to salinity problems and loss of fertility). Both books bring
together authoritative, peer reviewed evidence that the resilience of the world’s ecosystems is in
decline. Whole chapters in the twenty and thirty year updates of Limits to Growth are devoted to
this. The relevance of this new overview and thesis in Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update has
been confirmed by the 2005 publication of the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment6, the 2007
5
6
Simmons, M. (2000) Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All? An Energy White Paper.
Available at http://www.greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.pdf. Accessed 14 April 2007.
See the UN Millenium Ecosystem Assessment at http://www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx. Accessed 14 April 2007.
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
IPCC 4th Assessment7, the UK Stern Review8 and is also supported by evidence assembled by the
global Resilience Alliance for their thresholds database.9
So why does this first misunderstanding still persist?
The Limits to Growth team published their book just before the 1973 OPEC oil shocks. The book
became strongly associated in the media and public consciousness with that event. Table 4 and
surrounding text in Chapter 2 of Limits to Growth is where the confusion arises. Allegedly, it in this
table that the authors made the mistake of underestimating the non-renewable resource reserves of
the world and predicted that they would run out in a matter of decades. At a glance without reading
the surrounding text, Table 4 in Chapter 2 can appear to be stating that resource X will run out by
year Y.
However, the goal of Table 4 in Chapter 2 was to demonstrate how the exponential growth (i.e. the
rate of usage) of non-renewable resource reserves will use up these reserves more rapidly than
previously thought, and that society should therefore invest in greater material efficiency, energy
efficiency and recycling. It provided data on oil and 18 other non-renewable resources10 (see table
excerpt below), using the current known estimates of global non-renewable resource reserves, and
rates of usage, from a number of official United States government publications. The table
included:11

The static index (which calculates the number of years left of non-renewable resources if used
at 1972 rates based on 1972 estimates of known ‘reserves’).

The growth rate (the rate of growth of usage of X resource per annum using 1972 growth rates).

An exponential index (the number of years left of a resource assuming 1972 ‘reserves’ and
assuming exponential growth of usage at the 1972 per annum growth rate).

The ‘5 Times Reserve Exponential Index’ (the number of years left of X resource assuming 5
times 1972 ‘reserves’ estimates of X resource and exponential growth rates of usage).
Excerpt: Table 4 Non – Renewable Natural Resources12
Resource
Static Index
Growth Rate
Exponential
Index
5 Times Reserve
Exponential Index
Chromium
420
2.6
95
154
Gold
11
4.1
9
29
Iron
240
1.8
93
173
Petroleum
31
3.9
20
50
Indeed, Table 4 was never intended to be an accurate description of the future of the world’s non7
8
9
10
11
12
IPCC (2007) Fourth Assessment Report WG2: ‘Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability’, IPCC, Chapter 11:
Australia. http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2007.
Stern, N. (2006) The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Available at
www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm. Accessed 14 April
2007
See the Resilience Alliance at http://www.resalliance.org/ev_en.php. Accessed 14 April 2007.
Meadows, D., Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (1972) The Limits To Growth: A Report For The Club of Rome On The
Predicament of Mankind, Universe Books, New York, p 56-60.
Ibid, p 55
Ibid, pp 56-60
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
renewable reserves. The authors discussed in text surrounding Table 4 that there are many factors
that affect the future of global non-renewable resource reserves, usage rates and levels of
recycling. The authors note that ‘Of course the actual non-renewable availability in the next few
decades will be determined by factors far more complicated than either the simple static reserve
index or the exponential reserve index.’13 They discuss these factors in a thorough way. They also
conducted more modelling, investigating these factors which affect the future of the world’s
reserves of non-renewable resources and discussed the results of their modelling studies in the
pages following Table 4. So. the authors of Limits to Growth were not predicting that these
resources would run out within 20-30 years. They concluded the discussion about Table 4 stating
that, ‘Given present resource consumption rates and the projected increase in these rates, the great
majority of the currently important non-renewable resources will be extremely costly 100 years from
now.’14
However, this did not matter to media critics and a few economists who delighted over the coming
decades on using the fact that known non-renewable reserves since 1972 have increased
dramatically, to unfairly, but effectively, discredit the Limits to Growth team (although very few
economists did this in serious academic journal papers). A journalist, Ronald Bailey, started the
saga of the ‘wrong predictions’ in 1989 with an article he published in Forbes.15 Such critics also
played on the fact that the authors of the book did not explicitly make the key point that mining and
oil companies have no financial incentive to prove out reserves much beyond about thirty years. 16
Unfortunately, this misunderstanding is what most people remember about the book - that some of
the specific predictions regarding resource shortages have not occurred.17 For example:
In 1972, the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth questioning the sustainability of
economic and population growth… Limits to Growth estimated that by now we would begin
to see declines in food production, population, energy availability and life expectancy. None
of these developments has even begun to occur, nor is there any immediate prospect that
they will. So the Club of Rome was wrong.
Exxon Mobile, 200218
The Limits to Growth modelling was undertaken to inspire humanity to take action, rather than to
predict dates for shortages. The reality is that the 1972 models did not predict the end of oil for at
least one hundred years, and then only if no actions were taken to improve resource efficiency or
resource substitution. Rather, the team’s concern was the resilience and sustainability of the
planet’s sources and sinks; the world’s ecosystems. Thirty years on from the first publication, the
UN Millennium Assessment shows global fish catch for example has peaked and declined.
Ironically, because we have not adopted sufficient efficiency strategies or sufficient substitutes to
oil, our world’s oil production will soon also peak. Oil production has now peaked in over 60
countries, peaking in the USA the year Limits to Growth was published, in 1972. As Matthew
Simmons stated in 2004, ‘It is time for the world to re-read Limits to Growth! The message of 1972
is more real and relevant in 2004, and we wasted 30 valuable years of action by misreading the
message of the first book.’19
13
Ibid, p 63
Ibid, p 66
15
Bailey, R. (1995) ‘The True State of the Planet’, Free Press, New York.
16
Wikipedia provides a good summary of this issue, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth. Accessed 14 April 2007.
17
Hawken, P., Lovins, A. and Lovins, H. (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Earthscan Publishing,
London.
18
Meadows, D., Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (2004) The Limits To Growth: The 30-Year Update, Chelsea Green
Publishing, USA, p 204.
19
Simmons, M. (2000) Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All? An Energy White Paper.
Available at http://www.greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.pdf. Accessed 14 April 2007.
14
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Common Misunderstanding #2: The Limits to Growth authors were
pessimists who failed to take into account the potential for
technological, social and institutional innovation, instead just
predicting doom and gloom
Academics such as Cole and Freeman et al20 critiqued the Limits to Growth modelling in the 1970s
arguing that the assumptions made about technological innovation and efficiency improvements
were too pessimistic. They argued that the modelling done by the team did not consider a wide
enough range of assumptions about the rate with which economies could become more resource
efficient. Specifically they felt further investigation was needed using the team’s model to more fully
explore the potential for innovation, recycling, pollution controls, substitution of scarce resources
with less scarce resources etc. to assist humankind to stay within the limits.
The Limits to Growth team generously gave Cole and Freeman et al their model and sure enough
when run with these new assumptions - dramatic improvements in resource efficiency and
reductions in pollution levels – the model showed that it was possible for humanity to stay within the
ecological limits of the planet. But the new modelling efforts were done without such tight
restrictions on population or capital growth. Other modelling done to refute the Limits to Growth
model was also flawed for several reasons such as a failure to fairly account for the dynamic nature
of environmental and human systems.
These academics provide a valid argument, but it is a minor point and not significantly different from
the message or the modelling described in Chapter Five (‘The State of Global Equilibrium’) of the
original Limits to Growth book. It is important to emphasize that in this chapter the original team
also modelled scenario’s where a sustainable society could be achieved and describes how
humanity could create a truly sustainable society and live within the limits. Similarly as the title of
Chapter 7, ‘Transition to a Sustainable System’ (which is Chapter 7 in both the 1992 Update Beyond the Limits and the 2004 Limits to Growth – The Thirty Year Update) shows, the authors are
more optimistic than most.
The authors of the 1992 and 2004 updates highlight the ozone case study as a significant example
of humanity’s capacity to innovate new technologies to avoid catastrophic overshoot before it is too
late. They do believe that humanity can achieve a truly sustainable society and outline how, and
they emphasize the fact that trend is not destiny. They are seeking to help us to become aware of
our choices, and emphasize that our choices today will affect the choices of our children, and their
children’s children. In all these chapters and scenarios the Limits to Growth team show a great
appreciation of the roles of technological innovation, recycling, renewable energy, and efficient use
of resources, and how these will assist humankind to stay within the ecological limits of the planet.
As the authors wrote in 1992, ‘The decline [of ecosystem services] is not inevitable. To avoid it two
changes are necessary. The first is a comprehensive revision of policies and practices that
perpetuate growth in material consumption and in population. The second is a rapid, drastic
increase in the efficiency with which materials and energy are used.’21
20
Cole, H.S.D., Freeman, C., Jahoda, M. and Pavitt, K.I.R (eds) (1973) Thinking About The Future: A Critique of the Limits to Growth,
Chatto and Windus for Sussex University Press, London.
21
Meadows, D., Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (1992) Beyond The Limits: Global Collapse or A Sustainable Future,
Earthscan Publications, London, p xvi.
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Donnella Meadows emphasized her optimism in a famous quote,22
It seems to me a powerful message, worth repeating and repeating, that people want peace,
simplicity, beauty, nature, respect, the ability to contribute and create. These things are
much cheaper and easier to achieve than war, luxury, ugliness, waste, hate, oppression,
manipulation. Some day, when everyone understands that nearly all of us truly want the
same kind of world, it will take surprisingly little time or effort to have it.
Current member of The Club of Rome, Keith Suter summed it up well in his 1999 review of Limits to
Growth,23
To sum up, the warning from The Club of Rome remains valid. The British science writer
H.G. Wells once said that life was a race between education and disaster. The Club went to
the effort of issuing the warning not out of a sense that we are all destined to be destroyed
in an environmental catastrophe, but in the optimistic belief that it is possible to build a better
world and that humankind can be mobilized for that task.
Why then does this misunderstanding still persist?
Dennis Meadows kindly offered his perspective to the reviewers, on this important question:24
I can think of five reasons. First, people prefer to have optimistic visions of the future. When
someone raises the possibility of problems, it is easier to discredit the messenger than to
seek fundamental change. Second, the authors of Limits deliberately decided not to spend
time rebutting criticisms of their book. They felt global trends would soon enough validate
their main conclusions. So the criticisms remained unchallenged. Third, the media gets its
financial support principally from those who benefit from growth, not from those who criticize
it. So there is a systematic bias in favour of those who say continued growth is possible and
desirable. Fourth, many organizations, fear that anti-growth sentiment would lead to
changes that reduce their short-term profit. So they do their best to discredit the critics, even
if they believe them. We have seen the same behaviour vis-à-vis smoking-related cancers
and climate change. Fifth, the title of the book was poorly chosen. The focus of our analysis
is not on limits but on the features of the system that produce overshoot and collapse.
Meadows, D. (1999) ‘So Everyone Wants Peace, So What?’, The Global Citizen, September 23, 1999. Available at
http://www.pcdf.org/Meadows/visions.html. Accessed 3 March 2007
23
Suter, K. (1999) ‘Fair Warning: The Club of Rome Revisited’, ABC: the Slab. Available at
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/rome/default.htm. Accessed 11 April 2007.
24
Meadows, D (2007) Personal communication with the Reviewers, by email correspondence.
22
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Common Misunderstanding #3: The Limits to Growth books are antieconomic growth and advocate zero growth
In both the 20 and 30 year updates, the authors quote Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome,
who pointed out in 1977 that, ‘Some of those… accuse the [Limits to Growth] report… of advocating
ZERO GROWTH. Clearly, such people have not understood anything, either about the Club of
Rome, or about growth. The notion of zero growth is so primitive – as, for that matter, is that of
infinite growth, and so imprecise, that it is conceptual nonsense to talk of it living in a living dynamic
society’
In response to this criticism the authors wrote in Beyond the Limits (1992),25
A sustainable society would be interested in qualitative development, not physical
expansion. It would use material growth as a considered tool, not a perpetual mandate. It
would be neither for nor against growth. Before this society would decide on any specific
growth proposal, it would ask what the growth was for, and who would benefit, and what it
would cost, and how long it would last, and whether it would be accommodated by the
sources and sinks of the planet.
Clearly then the authors are not anti-growth and they clearly want us to differentiate between types
of growth.
So why does this criticism arise and why has it persisted?
Just as relatively few in the general public understand the concept of ‘overshoot’ few in the general
public understand the concept of decoupling economic from physical growth. Few people have
learnt that economic growth and physical growth are two different things because historically
economic and physical growth have grown ‘lock step’ with the industrial revolution. Hence when the
authors of Limits to Growth talk about the need to reduce physical growth – through recycling,
resource efficiency etc – many will assume that this has to also negatively affect economic growth.
Political parties, businesses and workers associate economic growth with many positive outcomes
such as high employment rates, good job security and reduced business investment risks. Many
people want more economic growth. Hence one of the most important tasks of those who care
about the future of this planet, and the almost 6.7 billion people who live on it, is to clearly explain
the difference between economic growth and growth of physical throughput (which is often
associated with environmental degradation). Economic growth is acceleration in the production of
economic value. Physical growth of the economy means the economy’s physical stocks and flows
spread over more area or has a larger material and energy throughput, or has a larger stock of
physical products or buildings or infrastructure.
The attentive reader of the three Limits to Growth books will find a differentiation near the start, but
because the authors have not defined these terms clearly right at the front of each book, those who
do not read ‘cover to cover’ could be left with the perception that economic growth and physical
growth are being presented as one and the same. This is compounded by the fact that the authors
used the term ‘growth’ to refer to the pollution, population, and physical throughput of the economy;
in other words mainly the negative aspects of the economy. When defining growth in this way
anyone would agree that of course over time this needs to be slowed down, stopped or even
25
Meadows, D., Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (1992) Beyond The Limits: Global Collapse or A Sustainable Future,
Earthscan Publishing, London, p 210.
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
reduced. However, without this clarification it is clear why the authors of Limits to Growth have been
labelled ‘anti-economic growth’. Defining these terms key terms - economic growth, physical
throughput growth and decoupling of economic growth from physical throughput growth - still more
clearly at the start of these books perhaps would have saved the authors much undeserved
criticism and some of their readers much confusion. This clarification would be easy to make in
future work. Dennis Meadows concurred in his reading of this review that, ‘surely the goal is to
decouple GDP growth from the growth of physical throughput growth’.
A final key step to remove confusion would be, having defined these terms, to then use them –
‘economic growth’, ‘physical throughput growth’ and ‘decoupling of economic growth from physical
growth’ - consistently through the text to ensure the reader is clear which type of ‘growth’ is being
discussed.
Another reason why such changes would make a big difference to perceptions about the Limits to
Growth books is the fact that the three Limits to Growth books were published during a time when
the benefits of economic growth were being seriously disputed by many academics26 who, partly
inspired by Limits to Growth, then wrote many books arguing that economic growth literally is bad.
Thus in this context of real debate over whether economic growth is good or bad it would have been
wise for the Limits to Growth team to acknowledge this lack of definition and in their sequels clearly
address this literature. It would also have been wise to more clearly define what conditions are
needed for economic growth to be socially and environmentally sustainable.
Anyone writing on ‘growth’ should be clear that there is enormous confusion over definitions of the
word to different audiences. When businesses and governments talk about growth they generally
mean economic growth. They mean (assuming the expenditure model of measuring GDP) the
amount of economic value and monetary transactions as measured by the GDP. When
environmentalists talk about growth they mean physical growth. Environmentalists dislike physical
growth because it correlates with environmental damage and resource depletion.
Alan AtKisson, a colleague to the authors, concurs with this need to clarify economic and physical
growth (though he does not frame it as a criticism of Limits to Growth). He writes,27
The trick is in separating out two kinds of growth: the so-called ‘economic growth,’ on the
one hand, from growth in the amount of stuff we use and discard on the other (physical
growth). These are two very different phenomena, and they have been falsely - and
dangerously - confused for too long. Economic growth, remember, is nothing more than an
increase in the flow of money. That’s what we’re measuring when we look at the Gross
Domestic Product, which economists use as the key indicator of whether a country’s
economy is ‘growing’ or not.
26
The first book to have an impact that really questioned the value of economic growth was Mishan, E.J. (1967) The Costs of Economic
Growth, Staples Press, London. It had an impact largely because Mishan was an economist and reader from the London School of
Economics. This gave him credibility. Other influential publications include:
- Mishan, E.J. (1977) The Economic Growth Debates: an Assessment, George Allen & Unwin, London.
- Leipert, C. (1989), ‘National Income and Economic Growth: the Conceptual Side of Defensive Expenditures’, Journal of Economic
Issues, vol XXIII, no. 3, September, pp 843-56.
- Leipert, C. (1989) ‘Social Costs of the Economic Process and National Accounts: the Example of Defensive Expenditures’, Journal
of Interdisciplinary Economics, vol 3, no.1, pp 27-46.
- Daly, H.E. and Cobb, J. (1989) For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Towards Community, the Environment and a
Sustainable Future, Beacon Press, Boston.
- Douthwaite, R. (1992) The Growth Illusion, Green Books, Devon, UK.
- Daly, H.E. (1996) Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, Beacon Pres, Boston, MA.
- Parris, R (1997) ‘Development in Wonderland: the Social and Ecological Sustainability of Economic Growth’, Issues in Global
Development, no. 9, February, World Vision Australia, Melbourne.
- Korten D.C. (1995) When Corporations Rule the World, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, p 12.
- Korten D.C. (1998) The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco.
27
AtKisson, A. (2000) ‘The New New Economy’, An Irregular Column on Sustainability, Innovation, and Global Affairs, AtKisson Inc.
Available at http://www.atkisson.com/pubs/FRsum00.html. Accessed 3 March 2007
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Limits to Growth –
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The GDP is a famously successful indicator of economic activity, and a notoriously bad way
to measure progress. The GDP measures every dollar or yen or euro that changes hands,
without bothering to ask whether that money went to purchase computer chips or to clean
up oil spills. Because GDP growth has all too often been correlated with the destruction of
Nature, it’s a measurement environmentalists love to hate, and with good reason. Yet
contrary to what many environmentalists believe, there’s nothing inherently ‘unsustainable’
about economic growth - as long as it gets decoupled from the flow of stuff. Money flow
(value) can increase, even as material flow (resource use and waste) decreases.
In fact, indicators suggest this decoupling is already starting to happen. Even the U.S.
economy, for example, has begun to increase GDP without a similar increase in energy
consumption. The ‘materials intensity’ of many industrial economies is getting more efficient,
generating more money per unit of stuff every year.
These are trends we should be celebrating - and accelerating - if we want to pass a worthy
and beautiful world on to the next generation. There is every incentive to make the
conversion to sustainability, and not just for environmental reasons (critical though they are).
All materials are costs, all energy is a cost, all waste is a cost. Reducing such costs raises
profits, and not incidentally lightens the load on Mother Earth, and improves life for humans.
Everybody wins. That’s sustainability. That’s also the great challenge of the 21st Century.
In framing the growth debate in this way AtKisson outlines the challenge to decouple economic
growth from negative physical growth and environmental pressure. Books inspired by the Limits to
Growth team - for example the international bestsellers Factor Four and Natural Capitalism - show
that significant decoupling of economic growth from physical growth is now possible over time. In
Chapter 11 of Factor Four, the authors demonstrate literally through using the Limits to Growth
model that they only needed to assume modest increases in the Limits to Growth team’s
assumptions about the rate of resource efficiency gains in the economy (plus strategic substitution)
to avoid the limits to physical growth.
This is where the debate is today. Alan AtKisson in his book Believing Cassandra28 writes,
Paradoxically, by re-inventing the world so that it no longer runs on Growth [which Alan has
clearly defined as physical, population, and pollution growth], we can increase that strange
phenomenon we call ‘economic growth’… Sustainability is fundamentally a matter of
decoupling money from material consumption, so that the value within the economy can
steadily increase, even as humanity’s throughput gets drastically reduced.
28
AtKisson, A. (1999) Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks At A Pessimist’s World, Earthscan Publishing, London, p 204.
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Limits to Growth –
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Finding New Audiences – Opportunities for Further Exploration of Topic
Those developing subsequent work in line with the Limits to Growth series may also find new
audiences if it uses the sorts of frameworks discussed above. For example, decoupling of economic
growth from negative environmental pressure would be a framework of broad appeal, given the
significant and growing interest in how to achieve decoupling. This potential is demonstrated by the
second of five objectives adopted in 2001 by OECD Environment Ministers for the OECD
Environmental Strategy for the First Decade of the 21st Century being, ‘Decoupling Environmental
Pressures from Economic Growth’.29 It is also a stated goal of the European Union.
Increasing the use of economic frameworks, studies & language:
We believe this is the main challenge and opportunity for those now building on from the Limits to
Growth - to increase the use of rigorous economic frameworks, studies and language to support the
overall thesis.
We believe the authors missed an opportunity to communicate with economists in this latest
publication. Economics has increasingly become the study of market failure, so using the economic
frameworks of market failure could help the authors communicate their message more effectively
with economists. For example, using the model of decoupling economic growth from negative
environmental pressure, the authors could have incorporated recent research which is now showing
that a transition to a sustainable economy, if focused on improving resource productivity, will lead to
at least strong economic growth (and possibly even higher than business as usual), while at the
same time reducing pressures on the environment and enhancing employment. This economic
modelling has been shown in Europe by ex-Wuppertal Institute member Joachim Spangenberg
working with neo-classical economists, on a project called ‘Labour and Environment’. Spangenberg
is currently working in a team to demonstrate this theory with global economic scenario models
used in several EU funded projects, including one called Modelling Opportunities and Limits for
Restructuring Europe towards Sustainability (MOSUS).
Increasing the focus on job creation and improved business competitiveness:
The Limits to Growth authors have dared to ask the ‘big questions’. For instance, they ask why it is
that an idea like ‘Free Trade’, which shares even more uncertainties than sustainability and leads to
more job losses than sustainability, has gone to the top of the political agenda? They ask why in
thirty years did ‘Free Trade’ succeed to get to the top of the political agenda when sustainability is
lucky to be even mentioned by our world’s leaders and politicians?
The solution we believe is for the sustainability movement to follow Donnella Meadow’s example
and work together to improve both our theory and practice. We can all improve how we
communicate sustainability ideas to relate to the central concerns of business, government and
citizens. The Natural Edge Project believes it is vital that sustainability books are clear on how a
transition to sustainability will affect people, their lives, their families and their aspirations.
We believe that communication of sustainability ideas must be related to and explain how it is
possible to assist economic growth while decoupling physical throughput. This is important because
at the heart of lack of progress on sustainability is the mainstream belief that major trade-offs
29
OECD Environmental Strategy for the First Decade of the 21st Century Adopted by OECD Environment Ministers 16 May 2001. The
OECD Environmental Strategy identifies five inter-linked objectives for enhancing cost effective and operational environmental policies
in the context of sustainable development. Objective 2: Decoupling environmental pressures from economic growth (with a special
focus on agriculture, transport and energy). Available at http://www1.oecd.org/env/min/2001/products/EnvStrategy.pdf. Accessed 3
March 2007
Prepared by The Natural Edge Project 2007
Page 11 of 13
Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
between sustainable development and economic growth are inevitable. The result is that other
agendas like ‘Free Trade’ that promise to help economic growth get the attention. The result of this
belief is that governments, research and development institutions and firms have not been
encouraged to explore economically feasible and desirable paths to an ecologically sustainable
economy. If sustainability is going to be as high on the political agenda as free trade, sustainability
publications need to address key issues of job creation, business competitiveness, productivity and
economic growth. These are the central concerns of decision makers. This is what The Natural
Edge Project is doing in its publications such as The Natural Advantage of Nations, Factor 5 an
update of Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Usage30, and TNEP’s major publication
on the “growth” debates - Cents and Sustainability.31
Conclusion
The authors of Limits to Growth - The Thirty Year Update are to be commended for their daring and
innovative work over the last thirty years. It is easy to criticise in hindsight. We hope that our
comments are received as constructive suggestions on how the work could be made even better.
It is important to recognise that a full review of the Limits to Growth books would also review the
history of global dynamical modelling itself and discuss developments in global dynamic modelling
since the 1960s. Global dynamical modelling has advanced a long way since the 1960s and 1970s
(originally pioneered by the Limits to Growth team). The work of the International Panel of Climate
Change and the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is testament to these advances in
dynamical computer modelling. Such a full review of the history of dynamical modelling however is
beyond the scope of this short review.
In conclusion, Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update would be a beneficial read for anyone
interested in creating a better world. For those new to sustainability, it is a great introduction. For
those experienced in the field, the latest Limits to Growth update will ensure that you are ‘up to
date’. The original book was world-changing, inspiring a generation to develop ways to stay within
the ecological limits, while the 20 year and in particular the 30 year update provide further
clarification and expansion on the key issues outlined in the original Limits to Growth publication.
Indeed, we recommend that all three seminal publications are read – in full.
30
von Weizsacker, E., Lovins, A.B. and Lovins, L.H. (1997) Factor Four: Doubling Wealth and Halving Resource Usage, Earthscan
Publications, London.
31
Smith, M. Hargroves, K (2008) Cents and Sustainability: Making Sense of How to Grow Economies, Build Communities and Revive
the Environment in Our Lifetimes. Earthscan/James&James (Forthcoming) http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/centsandsustainability.aspx
(Accessed Sept 2007)
Prepared by The Natural Edge Project 2007
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Limits to Growth –
Book Review to mark the 35th Anniversary of Publication.
Limits to Growth - Further Reading and Online Resources
Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update
-
Meadows, D., Meadows, D., and Randers, J. (2004) A Synopsis of Limits to Growth: The 30
Year Update. Available at http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/limitstogrowth.pdf. Accessed 11 April
2007.
-
Sound Interview (2004) Dennis Meadows one of the members and authors of the book Limits to
Growth:
The
30
year
Update,
Global
Public
Media.
Available
at
(http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RM/2004/10/Meadows.FSN.20041009.mp3. Accessed 11
April 2007.
-
Interview
Transcript
with
Dennis
Meadows
(n.d.).
Available
at
http://www.euronatur.org/Interview_Dennis_Meadows.dennismeadows_en.0.html.Accessed 11
April 2007.
-
Meadows, D. (2004) Presentation at the Earth Dialogues, Barcelona. Available at
http://www.earthdialogues.org/2004/barcelona/doc/bio/DennisMeadows.pdf. Accessed 11 April
2007.
-
The Sustainability Institute – Founded by the late Donella Meadows. Available at
http://www.sustainer.org/SIinfo/index.html. Accessed 14 April 2007.
Important Online Reviews Of The Limits to Growth Books
-
Simmons, M. (2000) Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been
Correct, After All?, An Energy White Paper. Available at http://www.greatchange.org/ovsimmons,club_of_rome_revisted.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2007.
-
Suter, K. (1999) ‘Fair Warning: The Club of Rome Revisited’, ABC: The Slab. Available at
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/rome/default.htm. Accessed 11 April 2007.
Dynamical Systems Modelling – Online Resources
-
Jay Forrester Publications, http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/publications.html. Accessed 11 April
2007.
-
Systems Dynamics Resources, http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/resources.html. Accessed 11 April
2007.
The Natural Edge Project – Online Resources
-
Smith, M. Hargroves, K (2007) Cents and Sustainability: Making Sense of How to Grow
Economies, Build Communities and Revive the Environment in Our Lifetimes.
Earthscan/James&James (Forthcoming)
www.naturaledgeproject.net/centsandsustainability.aspx (Accessed Sept 2007)
-
Smith, M., and Hargroves, K. (2007) Executive Summary: Action on climate change can help
business competitiveness and economic growth, (Submitted as a call for leadership from the
participants of the '8th National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development'), The
Natural Edge Project (TNEP).Available At http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/60by2050.aspx
(Accessed Sept 2007)
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