Produced in 1972, we knew even then that we needed to rein in the unfettered exploitation of this planet and it’s resources. It predicted collapse around 2040, which seems pretty on point given how things are going.
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As Dennis Meadows himself has said a number of times, there is no “prediction”. I’ts like predicting temperature in the future based on CO2 levels. A bunch of stuff has to come about to allow the emissions to occur. It’s a likely projction if a bunch of inputs are met.
That said, it was a ground breaking study, something President Jimmy Carter took seriously, and what got me interested in this whole thing in the early 1990’s.
Alas the US and the world ignored the information (worse still laughed at it) and decided to keep eating the future and shitting in our own nest … And here we are, "On the eve of destruction "
Your right. Prediction was too strong a word. Good looking out.
They modeled a number of possible futures, including the set named BAU, but they did not pick a particular one. In fact, the implicit assumption was that, collectively, we would prevent BAU from happening, as implications were so dire. The rest is history.
One thing that gets me is the oil. Peak oil was made fun of but without fraking its just about right. It feels that the things we find to push a little further out have massively bad effects that just sorta makes a farther future even worse in exchange for keepin on keepin on in the short term.
