{"id":52449,"date":"2020-04-13T14:50:13","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T19:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52449"},"modified":"2020-04-13T14:50:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T19:50:20","slug":"limits-to-growth-and-the-covid-19-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52449","title":{"rendered":"Limits to Growth and the COVID-19 epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chelseagreen.com\/2020\/limits-to-growth-covid-epidemic\/\">Limits to Growth and the COVID-19 epidemic<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chelseagreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bb-plugin\/cache\/World_bannersnack-panorama.jpg\" alt=\"World_bannersnack\" class=\"wp-image-823036\" title=\"World_bannersnack\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Forty-eight years ago I led an 18-month study at MIT on the causes and consequences of growth in population and material production on the planet earth through the year 2100. \u201cIf the present growth trends \u2026 continue unchanged\u201d we concluded, \u201cthe limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To illustrate this conclusion, we published a set of 13 scenarios generated by World3, the computer model built by my team. In those scenarios major global indices, such as industrial output per capita, typically stopped growing and began to decline between 2015 and 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The current epidemic does not prove we were right.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chelseagreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/city-infrastructure_BannerSnack-300x250.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-823024\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When climate scientists are asked if a particular storm proves their theory of climate change, they point out that a model of long-term continuous change can not predict, nor be corroborated by a short-term discrete event. There have always been catastrophic storms. But, the climatologists&nbsp; point out, increasingly frequent and violent storms are consistent with the climate change thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">World3 is a model of continuous interactions between population, resources, and capital over the long term.&nbsp; In the context of 200 years, the COVID-19 pandemic is a short-term, discrete event. There have always been plagues, but<strong>&nbsp;increasingly frequent and violent epidemics are consistent with the limits to growth thesis.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There are two main causative links.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, the explosive growth of humanity\u2019s population and economy has stressed natural ecosystems,&nbsp;<strong>lowering their capacity to self-regulate<\/strong>, and making breakdowns such as epidemics more likely. In the recent past global society has been confronted with MERS, Ebola, Zika, SARS, and H1N1 plus major outbreaks of measles and cholera. And now we have COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Limits to Growth and the COVID-19 epidemic Forty-eight years ago I led an 18-month study at MIT on the causes and consequences of growth in population and material production on the planet earth through the year 2100. \u201cIf the present growth trends \u2026 continue unchanged\u201d we concluded, \u201cthe limits to growth on this planet will [&hellip;]<\/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":[4],"tags":[141,28817,29011,485,29395,4266,855],"class_list":["post-52449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-limits-to-growththe-30-year-update","tag-resiliency","tag-viral-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449","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=52449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52450,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449\/revisions\/52450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}