The “Limits to Growth” was right: Italy’s population starts declining.
More and more data are accumulating to disprove the legend of the “mistakes” that has been accompanying the study titled “The Limits to Growth” (LTG). For instance, Graham Turner has shown how the historical data for the world’s economy have been following rather closely the curves of the “base case” scenario presented in 1972. But the fact that this scenario has been working well up to the beginning of the 21st century doesn’t mean it will keep working in the same way in the future. The base case scenario describes a worldwide economic collapse that should start at some moment during the first two-three decades of the century. Clearly, the world’s economy has not collapsed, so far, even though it may be argued that it is giving out ominous signs that it is starting to do just that. But, we can’t yet prove that the base case scenario was right.
Yet, the LTG collapse scenario is an average over the whole world and we may imagine that some sections of the world’s economy should collapse earlier, and some later. And, indeed, it appears that some local economies are collapsing right now. It may be that a country like Italy is already well advanced in this process, so that we shouldn’t be not just seeing the decline of its GdP, but also the start of an irreversible population decline.
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