Testing the forecasts of the limits to growth to me means that civilization is supposed to have collapsed in this current century as per the predictions that were made. I believe the data and forecasts because a research that was conducted at Melbourne University established that limits to growth with start to be experienced in the next forty years to come. In case the world continues to follow the trend shown in the figure, early stages of worldwide collapse will commence to emerge soon (Meadows).
The graph indicates that the world is trending towards the “business as usual” scenario which are the limits to growth. From the figure, the growing population, as well as the material wealth demand, would result in a larger industrial output together with pollution. This is exactly what is happening in the world today. The rate at which resources are being exploited is very high, which has made pollution to rise. The levels of industrial output, as well as food per capital, has been on the rise too. Therefore, the world population has been rising quickly. This has made the limits to growth from my perspective check out with reality.
In order to cater for the growing population, industries have to increase their inputs to produce a higher output. This leads to increased use of natural resources. Over years, due to exploitation, the resources will become very expensive to acquire. These companies will have to channel more of their capital towards acquiring resources making organizational per capital commence falling. On the other hand, pollution will be mounting due to increased production. Increased pollution causes a decrease in industrial, agricultural inputs that leads to a decrease in production of food as per capita declines. The effects do not end here. Education and health services are also going to be cut back. All these will combine and bring a rise in death rates as from 2020. This is why the trend of the population no longer rises but starts to decline in the graph. The effect of population decrease will be felt globally and changes will be significant as from 2030 as deaths will have reached to half a billion persons per decade. The living conditions with time will return to similar levels that were being experienced in the early 1900s.
Resource constraints are the ones that will cause a global failure. However, it can be established from the figure that limits to growth have also factored in the fallouts from elevated levels of pollution which are inclusive of climatic changes. The main reason being that carbon dioxide emissions due to industrial production activities have climatic effects through global warming which has adverse effects on the environment. The initial stages of collapse have already on the go. This can be evidenced by the 2007 to 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Also, these ongoing economic disorders may just be a forerunner as the fallouts from the supply constraints. The pursuit of material wealth led to unstable debts levels resulting to higher food prices and oil which amplified the defaults as well as the Global Financial Crisis.
The conclusions can be tested using the data from economics and social affairs department, the organization of food and agriculture, UN statistics yearbook, and UNESCO. The data gathered is to be plotted in conjunction with the limits to growth to examine after forty years’ scenario. The most interesting thing is that the limits to growth have started to exhibit themselves and that they will be felt adversely in the next a hundred years to come.
Work cited
Dennis Meadows. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
