{"id":19524,"date":"2016-04-04T12:31:40","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T17:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19524"},"modified":"2016-04-04T12:31:40","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T17:31:40","slug":"could-an-economic-collapse-be-in-our-near-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19524","title":{"rendered":"Could an Economic Collapse be in Our Near Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could an Economic Collapse be in Our Near Future?<\/a><\/h3>\n

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?<\/p>\n

\n

That study, issued in the 1972 book\u00a0The Limits to Growth<\/em>, 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 \u201cprecipitously\u201d starting in about 2015.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0The Limits to Growth<\/em>, 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\u2019s models. A recent paper examining the original 1972 study goes so far as to say that the study\u2019s predictions are well on course to being borne out.<\/p>\n

That research paper, prepared by a University of Melbourne scientist, Graham Turner, is unambiguously titled \u201cIs Global Collapse Imminent?<\/a>\u201d As you might guess from the title, Dr. Turner is not terribly optimistic.<\/p>\n

He is merely the latest researcher to sound alarm bells. Just last month, a\u00a0revised paper by 19 climate scientists<\/a>\u00a0led by James Hansen demonstrates that continued greenhouse-gas emissions will lead to a sea-level rise of several meters in as few as 50 years, increasingly powerful storms and rapid cooling in Europe.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could an Economic Collapse be in Our Near Future? 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\u00a0The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[141,150,5493,236,6955,485,13289,1371,2096],"class_list":["post-19524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-climate-change","tag-collapse","tag-counterpunch","tag-economic-collapse","tag-james-hansen","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-pete-dolack","tag-population","tag-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19525,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19524\/revisions\/19525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}