T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth was published. Four professors of different disciplines and 17 researchers studied the interaction of the Earth with humanity to see what the future held for us.
The back cover told us that continued growth of population and production would all add up to a final reckoning - and then went on, "Now a team of M.I.T. scientists, with the aid of a giant computer, has completed a study of the future if present growth continues. Their inescapable conclusions are beyond anyone's grimmest fears. Possibly within as little as 70 years, our social and economic system will collapse unless drastic changes are made very soon."
In 1977 I bought a copy from a bookstore in the German market town of Trier for one Mark. Also in that year, I got together with a friend and we formed a society 'for the promotion of alternative ways to live.' We got together with many others and argued long and hard about the environment and much of what we said was based on the contents of that book. The World was in danger if we did nothing! The only problem was that we were all just a raggle-taggle collection of students and similar goof-bodies with little structure and even less of an idea of how to change the World.
I was made the president, my friend was the organiser and we held meetings and passed resolutions. We opened a tea room in Trier and someone baked rock-hard bread and made inedible biscuits which we sold to fund our campaign to change the World. The tea room was nearly always packed - it was a happening place! But we had heard of a new movement that was growing in Germany calling itself 'The Green Movement'. We wanted to hold a meeting, but now we had too much support, so a back-room at a nearby pub was booked.
Hundreds came and even the street outside was blocked by the crowds. Somehow and despite the chaos, it was decided that we must join the new 'Green Movement'. Leading this movement was a radical leftist politician called Joschka Fischer. Fischer was invited and an even bigger hall was booked. I seem to remember that about 3,000 people came and it was standing room only. Considering that the hall was well outside the town, we could hardly believe the response we were getting!
Fischer spoke, I spoke, my friend spoke. All sorts of people I had never seen before and from all walks of life and of all ages spoke. Resolutions were passed as hands were raised. Fischer held a speech and we all applauded. There and elsewhere, right across Germany, in 1980 European politics changed forever and The Green Party was born.
So here we are, exactly 50 years after the publication of The Limits to Growth - a publication that was vilified and derided by serious thinkers such as economists and climatologists, oil geologists and commodities experts everywhere. The book and the professors' findings were, they said, arrant nonsense. Leafing through the yellowing pages of my copy that I bought all those years ago, I see just how deadly accurate some of those predictions have turned out to be. The one thing the professors missed was the warming of the planet - but their CO2 predictions were 100% correct. We still argue about whether that warming comes from the tilt of the Earth changing (AKA The Milankovitch Effect) or CO2, but there can be no argument about the effects of pollution.
Industry and the political classes blissfully ignored the Green Party until it started to gain votes and members of parliament (my friend became one of them) and had to be made parts of regional and then national coalition governments. Slowly and begrudgingly, lead was taken out of petrol and cars and trucks were made more efficient. But the broad sweep of ever-rising pollution has remained unchecked. Yes, the cities of Europe and North America are cleaner, but that is because we have moved those 'dark satanic mills' to India, China, Africa and elsewhere where we can't see them. We are even shipping millions of tonnes of plastic waste to the Middle East, the Far East and Africa.
Today, politicians everywhere are falling over themselves to make absurd cosmetic changes to our lives and business and industry, changes that do nothing to ameliorate pollution and waste but do reduce our standards of living. And nothing is so cynical as the mad rush to introduce electric cars whose net polluting effect is considerably higher than now vilified Diesel cars. There are medium sized powerful saloon cars on our roads that do 60mpg that are regarded as sinful and bad, whereas thousands are killed every year digging for the raw materials required to build the batteries for electric cars. How driving a car whose materials kills some 2,000 children every year in the Congo alone can be seen as 'virtue signaling' baffles me (WHO figures).
And in a cacophony of virtuous noises, mining companies have been prevented from mining for raw materials in counties where there is the rule of law and health and safety rules are adhered to. Mining for high-grade copper in Arizona is prevented. One mine has been waiting for a permit for 21 years, whereas low-grade mining (which is far more polluting) in South America is welcomed. Politicians have prevented the building of new refineries and the drilling for fresh oil supplies, yet condemn the oil companies for high prices and threaten them with windfall taxes - but they carefully avoid mentioning that petroleum is just liquid taxes. Taxes that they use to buy votes.
So today - Surprise! Surprise! We are reaching the first bump along the road to the limits to growth. Petrol is at £2 a litre. Electricity will be three times the cost next year. The same is true for fertiliser, seeds and all the other agricultural inputs. Farmers will need to double their prices to stay in business. The supermarkets will push back, but if they push hard enough, those farmers will be forced to stop planting vegetables and go for something safer that requires lower inputs like Winter wheat. This year's prices were contracted in 2020 and 2021, but next year's contracts are being negotiated today. You will be paying far, far higher prices for vegetables - if they are available.
The study and the book 'The Limits to Growth' were commissioned by The Club of Rome and they published a series of commentaries to the book. Their closing words were "The last thoughts we wish to offer is that man must explore himself - his goals and values - as much as the world he seeks to change. The crux of the matter is not only whether the human species will survive, but even more whether it can survive without falling into a state of worthless existence."
We were warned in the 70s and our answer was to do nothing. 50 years later and the warnings are getting louder and louder, so we stuff a bit of Rockwool into the ceilings and put solar panels on otherwise uninsulated houses and wonder why our energy bills keep going up. We lament and moan about £2 a litre fuel for our 20mpg SUVs and take a smoke-belching bus. Vast areas of Europe are growing subsidised sweet corn to be made into ethanol for fuel instead of growing vegetables. Mutti Merkel lost her mind and replaced nuclear energy with Russian gas and power stations fuelled with brown coal from giant strip-mines - the most polluting and wasteful way to generate energy possible.
There are answers but none of them are the cosmetic nonsense we have seen so far. There are indeed limits to growth, but stupidity, it seems, is truly limitless.
The back cover told us that continued growth of population and production would all add up to a final reckoning - and then went on, "Now a team of M.I.T. scientists, with the aid of a giant computer, has completed a study of the future if present growth continues. Their inescapable conclusions are beyond anyone's grimmest fears. Possibly within as little as 70 years, our social and economic system will collapse unless drastic changes are made very soon."
In 1977 I bought a copy from a bookstore in the German market town of Trier for one Mark. Also in that year, I got together with a friend and we formed a society 'for the promotion of alternative ways to live.' We got together with many others and argued long and hard about the environment and much of what we said was based on the contents of that book. The World was in danger if we did nothing! The only problem was that we were all just a raggle-taggle collection of students and similar goof-bodies with little structure and even less of an idea of how to change the World.
I was made the president, my friend was the organiser and we held meetings and passed resolutions. We opened a tea room in Trier and someone baked rock-hard bread and made inedible biscuits which we sold to fund our campaign to change the World. The tea room was nearly always packed - it was a happening place! But we had heard of a new movement that was growing in Germany calling itself 'The Green Movement'. We wanted to hold a meeting, but now we had too much support, so a back-room at a nearby pub was booked.
Hundreds came and even the street outside was blocked by the crowds. Somehow and despite the chaos, it was decided that we must join the new 'Green Movement'. Leading this movement was a radical leftist politician called Joschka Fischer. Fischer was invited and an even bigger hall was booked. I seem to remember that about 3,000 people came and it was standing room only. Considering that the hall was well outside the town, we could hardly believe the response we were getting!
Fischer spoke, I spoke, my friend spoke. All sorts of people I had never seen before and from all walks of life and of all ages spoke. Resolutions were passed as hands were raised. Fischer held a speech and we all applauded. There and elsewhere, right across Germany, in 1980 European politics changed forever and The Green Party was born.
So here we are, exactly 50 years after the publication of The Limits to Growth - a publication that was vilified and derided by serious thinkers such as economists and climatologists, oil geologists and commodities experts everywhere. The book and the professors' findings were, they said, arrant nonsense. Leafing through the yellowing pages of my copy that I bought all those years ago, I see just how deadly accurate some of those predictions have turned out to be. The one thing the professors missed was the warming of the planet - but their CO2 predictions were 100% correct. We still argue about whether that warming comes from the tilt of the Earth changing (AKA The Milankovitch Effect) or CO2, but there can be no argument about the effects of pollution.
Industry and the political classes blissfully ignored the Green Party until it started to gain votes and members of parliament (my friend became one of them) and had to be made parts of regional and then national coalition governments. Slowly and begrudgingly, lead was taken out of petrol and cars and trucks were made more efficient. But the broad sweep of ever-rising pollution has remained unchecked. Yes, the cities of Europe and North America are cleaner, but that is because we have moved those 'dark satanic mills' to India, China, Africa and elsewhere where we can't see them. We are even shipping millions of tonnes of plastic waste to the Middle East, the Far East and Africa.
Today, politicians everywhere are falling over themselves to make absurd cosmetic changes to our lives and business and industry, changes that do nothing to ameliorate pollution and waste but do reduce our standards of living. And nothing is so cynical as the mad rush to introduce electric cars whose net polluting effect is considerably higher than now vilified Diesel cars. There are medium sized powerful saloon cars on our roads that do 60mpg that are regarded as sinful and bad, whereas thousands are killed every year digging for the raw materials required to build the batteries for electric cars. How driving a car whose materials kills some 2,000 children every year in the Congo alone can be seen as 'virtue signaling' baffles me (WHO figures).
And in a cacophony of virtuous noises, mining companies have been prevented from mining for raw materials in counties where there is the rule of law and health and safety rules are adhered to. Mining for high-grade copper in Arizona is prevented. One mine has been waiting for a permit for 21 years, whereas low-grade mining (which is far more polluting) in South America is welcomed. Politicians have prevented the building of new refineries and the drilling for fresh oil supplies, yet condemn the oil companies for high prices and threaten them with windfall taxes - but they carefully avoid mentioning that petroleum is just liquid taxes. Taxes that they use to buy votes.
So today - Surprise! Surprise! We are reaching the first bump along the road to the limits to growth. Petrol is at £2 a litre. Electricity will be three times the cost next year. The same is true for fertiliser, seeds and all the other agricultural inputs. Farmers will need to double their prices to stay in business. The supermarkets will push back, but if they push hard enough, those farmers will be forced to stop planting vegetables and go for something safer that requires lower inputs like Winter wheat. This year's prices were contracted in 2020 and 2021, but next year's contracts are being negotiated today. You will be paying far, far higher prices for vegetables - if they are available.
The study and the book 'The Limits to Growth' were commissioned by The Club of Rome and they published a series of commentaries to the book. Their closing words were "The last thoughts we wish to offer is that man must explore himself - his goals and values - as much as the world he seeks to change. The crux of the matter is not only whether the human species will survive, but even more whether it can survive without falling into a state of worthless existence."
We were warned in the 70s and our answer was to do nothing. 50 years later and the warnings are getting louder and louder, so we stuff a bit of Rockwool into the ceilings and put solar panels on otherwise uninsulated houses and wonder why our energy bills keep going up. We lament and moan about £2 a litre fuel for our 20mpg SUVs and take a smoke-belching bus. Vast areas of Europe are growing subsidised sweet corn to be made into ethanol for fuel instead of growing vegetables. Mutti Merkel lost her mind and replaced nuclear energy with Russian gas and power stations fuelled with brown coal from giant strip-mines - the most polluting and wasteful way to generate energy possible.
There are answers but none of them are the cosmetic nonsense we have seen so far. There are indeed limits to growth, but stupidity, it seems, is truly limitless.
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