Limits to the growth debate

Journal Article · · Resources; (United States)

OSTI ID:7264128

Gordon, L

The first two major studies sponsored by the club of Rome were the report of the Meadows team at MIT, The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, and the Mesarovic and Pestel report, Mankind at the Turning Point, published in 1974. When the Club of Rome met in Philadelphia in April of 1976, its pronouncements reflected a frame of mind quite different from that of 1972. Recently, Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the Hudson Institute have published The Next 200 Years, a book evidently inspired as much by antagonism to the limits-to-growth school of thought as by affirmative faith in its own vision of technological optimism. The author discusses the content of the studies and summarizes his own position in four areas. (1) While no trend of growth of anything can continue indefinitely in the real world, there are not global physical limits to economic growth within a time frame susceptible to plausible foresight or relevant to policy making. (2) In some world regions, notably South Asia and tropical Africa, population growth rates do indeed threaten to create a kind of Malthusian trap, and the rapid reduction of fertility is critically important to their development prospects and urgent in time. (3) For other parts of the world, both rates and directions of growth will be more influenced by changes in preferences for consumption and in attitudes toward production than by physical constraints, although higher energy costs and environmental pressures will also be important influences in generating such changes in growth patterns. (4) Probable changes in directions of growth will generate new and important issues in international economic and political relations, with both dangers and opportunities for the evolving world order. (MCW)

• OSTI ID: 7264128
• Journal Information: Resources; (United States), Vol. 52; Other Information: Prepared for a seminar of the Smithsonian Associates, Washington, DC, May 26, 1976
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
ENERGY SUPPLIES
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
POPULATION DYNAMICS
ECONOMIC POLICY
ECONOMICS
EDUCATION
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
FOOD
GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
INCOME
MARKET
OCCUPATIONS
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REGIONAL ANALYSIS
TRADE
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290200 - Energy Planning & Policy- Economics & Sociology