Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment

Society is right on track for a global collapse, new study of infamous 1970s report finds

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2021-07-24 13:00:12

Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported

In that report — published in the bestselling book "The Limits to Growth" (1972) — a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs. The researchers forecasted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal welfare would plummet.

The report's most infamous scenario — the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario — predicted that the world's economic growth would peak around the 2040s, then take a sharp downturn, along with the global population, food availability and natural resources. This imminent "collapse" wouldn't be the end of the human race, but rather a societal turning point that would see standards of living drop around the world for decades, the team wrote.

So, what's the outlook for society now, nearly half a century after the MIT researchers shared their prognostications? Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic system analysis researcher at the consulting firm KPMG, decided to find out. In the November 2020 issue of the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology, Herrington expanded on research she began as a graduate student at Harvard University earlier that year, analyzing the "Limits to Growth" predictions alongside the most current real-world data.

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