Limits to the growth debate
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), Journal Name: Resources; (United States) Vol. 52; ISSN RESUB
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Cornucopian fallacies: the myth of perpetual growth
''No growth'' energy policy for America
Related Subjects
290200 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
292000* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Supply
Demand & Forecasting
ECONOMIC POLICY
ECONOMICS
EDUCATION
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
ENERGY SUPPLIES
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
FOOD
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
INCOME
MARKET
OCCUPATIONS
POPULATION DYNAMICS
PRODUCTION
REGIONAL ANALYSIS
TRADE