According to a study released by researchers at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT, the world is headed for a “global economic collapse” if humans around the planet do not waver in their consumption of natural resource. Not only is global economic collapse imminent at the current rate of resource consumption and population growth, “precipitous population decline” will also occur.
Recent findings published in the study coincide with those of the Limits to Growth which is an academic report from 1972. Smithsonian Magazine wrote about an Australian physicist named Graham Turner who famously said:
“The world is on track for disaster.”
According to the report which was produced for The Club of Rome, the researchers conjured a computing model in order to forecast various scenarios based upon the current models of global resource consumption and population growth. A computing model is a mathematical model of a complex process or system which requires conditions for testing.
The majority of the computer scenarios processed indicated imminent economic collapse would occur right around the year 2030.
Unlimited economic growth potential is still a possibility, however, governments around the world would have to enact policies to limit the expansion of our ecological footprint (human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems) in addition to investing in green technologies.
Twelve million copies of the recently published report were distributed in thirty-seven different languages around the world. While there are those, such as former governor of the Federal Research Board and Yale economist Henry Wallich, who strongly disagree with the findings detailed in both the Limits to Growth as well as the more recent MIT study conveying similar findings. Wallich believed that the regulation of economic growth would be equivalent to “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”
Do you believe that a global economic collapse is truly imminent by 2030 based on the current rate of consumption and population growth as forecast by MIT’s computing model?
Source: Yahoo! Blogs: The Sideshow
