Green Capitalism - Waves of the Future
Climate Change, Non-Renewable Resources, Energy, Contaminants, Carbon Pricing...Resource Depletion Model Simulations: Shortages & Prospect of Economic Crisis
Could a combination of population growth and depletion of mineral reserves lead to economic crises, depressions, or even a collapse of the world economy in the near future?
Some have tried to answer that question by using computer models. The Club of Rome 1972 standard-run simulation (a business-as-usual type of scenario) pointed to a world collapse in the second half of this century.
See also Book I of the Waves of the Future Series
Non-Renewable Resources:
Mineral Supplies & Reserve Statistics
Resource Depletion Model Simulations:
Mineral Shortages & Prospect of Economic Crisis
Economics of Poverty
The Aging Baby Boomer Generation Problem
Resource Depletion Model Simulations: Shortages & Prospect of Economic Crisis
(Book Excerpts)
1972
It is not always easy to anticipate what the future will bring. Four decades ago, the Club of Rome (a non-profit global thinktank) issued a report which pointed at the possibility of a world collapse halfway through the 21 st century (Limits to Growth, Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J., et al., 1972)....The simulations were... heavily criticized, often discredited as gloom and doom scenarios. Some of the claims made by the report's detractors were later found to be themselves exaggerated when not entirely false....
2008
In, A Comparison of the Limits to Growth With Thirty Years of Reality, (2008), Graham Turner, a senior scientist at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra, Australia, compared three of the original scenarios with actual data from the last 30 years to determine the legitimacy and accuracy of the Limits to Growth simulations....Turner... pointed out that many current developments, namely with respect to oil reserves, climate change, and the prospect of food shortages, seem to be trending similarly to the now 40-year-old simulations....