HALF a century ago, in 1972, The Limits to Growth — a book commissioned by the Club of Rome that reported on the predicament of mankind and the implications of continued economic growth — revealed that Earth's interlocking resources, the global system of nature in which we all live, probably could not support present economic and population growth rates much beyond the end of this century.
Continued population and economic growth will deplete the world's resources and bring us unprecedented levels of pollution. As the book authors summarize, "if present growth trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years." They add: "The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity."
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