Collapse

"Climate scientists and others have in the past few years issued a steady stream of analyses showing that without immediate remedial actions, a disastrous future is headed our way. But is it a four-decade-old study that will prove prescient?

That study, issued in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, forecast that industrial output would decline early in the 21st century, followed quickly by a rise in death rates due to reduced provision of services and food that would lead to a dramatic decline in world population. To be specific, per capita industrial output was forecast to decline “precipitously” starting in about 2015.

Well, here we are. Despite years of stagnation following the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, things have not gotten that bad. At least not yet. Although the original authors of The Limits to Growth, led by Donella Meadows, caution against tying their predictions too tightly to a specific year, the actual trends of the past four decades are not far off from the what was predicted by the study’s models. A recent paper examining the original 1972 study goes so far as to say that the study’s predictions are well on course to being borne out."

Read : https://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/is-economic-collapse-coming/.

Hmmm ... In my younger years, I have been a firm believer in the scenarios developed by the Club of Rome, but I thought that "The limits to growth" had been dead and buried for a couple of decennia ; and this article is not very convincing in se.

But the authors may well be right for the wrong reasons. Personally I think that an economic collapse is not only possible but quite probable. And I have learned that a forecast or prognosis which is not pinned down on a specific date sooner or later comes to pass anyway.