Update I thought I’d repost this a year on, and reopen the discussion 10 September 2015
Reader ZM points me to a paper with this title, by Graham Turner of the University of Melbourne. Not only does Turner answer “Yes”, he gives a date: 2015. That’s a pretty big call to be making, given that 2015 is less than four months away.
The abstract reads:
The Limits to Growth “standard run” (or business-as-usual, BAU) scenario produced about forty years ago aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper. The BAU scenario results in collapse of the global economy and environment (where standards of living fall at rates faster than they have historically risen due to disruption of normal economic functions), subsequently forcing population down. Although the modelled fall in population occurs after about 2030—with death rates rising from 2020 onward, reversing contemporary trends—the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU scenario. In particular, contemporary peak oil issues and analysis of net energy, or energy return on (energy) invested, support the Limits to Growth modelling of resource constraints underlying the collapse.
A central part of the argument, citing Simmons is that critics of LtG wrongly interpeted the original model as projecting a collapse beginning in 2000, whereas the correct date is 2015.
I’ve been over this issue in all sorts of ways (see here and here for example, or search on Peak Oil). So readers won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t buy this story. I won’t bother to argue further: unless the collapse is even more rapid than Turner projects, I’ll be around to eat humble pie in 2016 when the downturn in output (and the corresponding upsurge in oil prices) should be well under way.
Given that I’m a Pollyanna compared to lots of commenters here, I’d be interested to see if anyone is willing to back Turner on this, say by projecting a decline of 5 per cent or more in world industrial output per capita in (or about) 2015, continuing with a sharply declining trend thereafter. [minor clarifications added, 5/9]
John Quiggin 
A major correction has to be on the cards. 2015 i.e. next year is when we starting exporting east coast gas even though we won’t enough for ourselves at a reasonable price. However liquid transport fuels are even more crucial, representing some 45% of primary energy consumption I believe. The world oil price has been remarkably stable since 2008 but the volume plateau has been held up by liquid fuels that are harder to treat or extract, for example tar sands, condensates, heavy sour crude, grain ethanol, oil drilled in 2km deep water and on prime farm land via horizontal drilling and fracking. The earliest fracking peak I’ve seen is 2016 but others are saying 2018. China is making liquid fuel from coal but hidden away well out of the cities.
If aggregate economic activity is roughly proportional to net energy consumption that suggests everything will slide downwards in sync. I’d say most of us have reduced our flying and driving so there may not be much more to cut. Even the auto industry is saying just 3% electric car sales by 2020. Something big is going down soon. Time to re-read The Magic Pudding.
I’m a fellow Pollyanna. I haven’t read the paper but I guess some of their model coefficients are based on business as usual rather than creative adaptation. The big underlying driver of the real economy is human capital and this doesn’t change vx jhjery fast. It’s not that shocks and resource depletions don’t hurt but rather that they also provoke responses, provided we have the flexibility to adapt.
The type of shock that I think might produce a serious general slump in living standards would be a new lethal highly communicable disease, a global war, or a large asteroid strike.
Is this the same Graham Turner who owns the Flight Centre group and fronted the national press club recently with Dick Smith arguing (pretty incoherently) against economic growth?
“If aggregate economic activity is roughly proportional to net energy consumption that suggests everything will slide downwards in sync.”
True, but this is a big if. Especially if by energy consumption you imply fossil fuel consumption. It seems to me entirely possible to have prosperous economy without fossil fuels. In fact, inevitable.
@kevin1
Oops, I guess not.
I am with Turner in principle, but I think that rather than a big crash there will be a progressive crumple. The reason that I believe this is that we are not out of options yet. China has just cut a gas deal with Russia, the US is drilling into their local high cost reserves, there is plenty of coal available, there are many countries which are accustomed to coping with energy shortages, Europe is in a bind but new vehicles are more efficient and Europe has a higher affordability access to these, and there is plenty of coal. For the time being I don’t see the pressure on Oil resources pushing the price up rapidly in a manner that would trip a recession cascade. I feel that we are a good 8 years away from that risk. But anyone who fails to take advantage of the present economic calm and not acquire a healthy amount of solar pv/thermal is I believe foolhardy.
Has anyone else noticed that the oil companies seem to have abandoned their roller coaster fuel pricing and prices have settled at under $1.40 per litre (for the basic stuff)? What ever the reason, it says that there is still flexibility in the system. So I think that 2015 is a premature call.
@Jim Birch
The catch is it takes a lot of fossil fuel to make energy technologies that are not fossil fuel. Silicon for example used in solar panels is made with the help of coal. Same goes for steel, cement, aluminium, rare earths and so on. It’s hard to see anything but liquid hydrocarbon powering passenger jets. Turner probably dreads the day he has to ask $10k for a Sydney to London economy class ticket powered by synfuel. There must be a least worst path which I suspect we are not taking.
Not very worried about Peak Oil but I am very concerned at the prospect of Peak Phosphorus and ocean food chain collapse (which, ironically, is partly driven by overuse of phosphorus). The latter could easily happen within the next 20 or even 10 years.
I have to finish reading the article before making a considered comment. But my understanding of Turner and the Limits to Growth book is that a downturn towards collapse becomes apparent or we see the onset of collapse around 2015 , but the convergence to proper collapse really happens more towards 2100 , Turner in The Guardian says around 2070, not 2015. The MSSI paper seems to be saying with Peak oil , collapse in oil has started now seriously in terms of expense to get oil, and this will have effects economically, but I am not sure of the other things .
I will repeat my comments on LtG to Jack King, he says my reading of the figure on LTG p. 124 is wrong. But anyone can download the PDF – and see. Please correct me if my reading of the figure is wrong – but the sharp collapse to the low values on the fertile axis looks to happen closer to 2100 than 2000 to me.
““The “standard” world model run assumes no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that have historically governed the de- velopment of the world system. All variables plotted here follow historical values from 1900 to 1970. Food, industrial output, and population grow exponentially until the rapidly diminishing resource base forces a slowdown in industrial growth. Because of natural delays in the system, both popu- lation and pollution continue to increase for some time after the peak of industrialization. Population growth is finally halted by a rise in the death rate due to decreased food and medical services” p. 124
There is a figure with curves for the various things like resources, population etc on that page too. It shows a convergence to collapse a bit before 2100 on the axis. you can download a pdf of the 1972 book from the internet and check the graph on that page yourself.
“The behavior mode of the system shown in figure 35 is clearly that of overshoot and collapse. In this run the collapse occurs because of nonrenewable resource depletion. The indus- trial capital stock grows to a level that requires an enormous input of resources. In the very process of that growth it depletes a large fraction of the resource reserves available. As resource prices rise and mines are depleted, more and more capital must be used for obtaining resources, leaving less to be invested for future growth. Finally investment cannot keep up with depre- ciation, and the industrial base collapses, taking with it the service and agricultural systems, which have become dependent on ind-qstrial inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides, hospital laboratories, computers, and especially energy for mechaniza- tion). For a short time the situation is especially serious because population, with the delays inherent in the age structure and the process of social adjustment, keeps rising. Population finally decreases when the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services.” p. 125
“The behavior mode of the system shown in figure 35 is clearly that of overshoot and collapse. In this run the collapse occurs because of nonrenewable resource depletion. The indus- trial capital stock grows to a level that requires an enormous input of resources. In the very process of that growth it depletes a large fraction of the resource reserves available. As resource prices rise and mines are depleted, more and more capital must be used for obtaining resources, leaving less to be invested for future growth. Finally investment cannot keep up with depre- ciation, and the industrial base collapses, taking with it the service and agricultural systems, which have become dependent on ind-qstrial inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides, hospital laboratories, computers, and especially energy for mechaniza- tion). For a short time the situation is especially serious because population, with the delays inherent in the age structure and the process of social adjustment, keeps rising. Population finally decreases when the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services.” p. 126
By fertile axis I mean vertical axis, sorry
OK, Hermit, glad to have you on record. Crash by 2020 at the outside.
My bad. Graham Turner of this report is a Melbourne academic and researcher. Graham Turner founder of Flight Centre is an ex vet and now partner in crime of Dick Smith in wanting immigration severely restricted.
On a local level the prosperity promised by coal mining and transportation in the Hunter Valley has been offset by a higher AUD, knocking local exporters hard; corruption of politics at every level (#ICAC) and pollution of water, soil and air by micro particles affecting health. Long term adverse effects still to be experienced and evaluated. Not sure of the nett benefits, if any, to your average household.
Argh. Messed up the formatting. Prof Q, do you mind deleting my previous?
Hmm. Based on my rough calculations (based on publicly available statistics), the per-passenger fuel cost of an A380 flight from Sydney to London in 2014 is, conservatively, around US$400 (or 82c per passenger-litre). Sydney-to-London economy airfares are currently around A$1500 . So in order for the airfare to rise to $10,000 based on fuel cost (I’m assuming rough parity between the dollars), the price of jet fuel would need to rise by 2200% or so, to around $16 per passenger-litre.
To put the $10,000 fare in context, a Sydney to London airfare in the late 1970s cost around $2300, or just over $9000 in today’s money. So an increase in fuel price by a factor of 22 would put the cost of air travel back to roughly where it was… in the late 1970s.
Tim, if air fares Sydney to London were b$10,000 then the traffic volume would be dramatically reduced. There would be scrapped planes at air field all over the world and a huge part of the fare would be required to keep airlines afloat carry those huge losses so the fuel to fare ratio would stay very much the same 2370 for fuel (a 6 fold markup) and 7630 for the airline or around today’s first class airfare. The seats would very likely be spaced a little further apart. (based on your assumptions)
@BilB
There’s no need to keep airlines afloat, and no way passengers can be charged to make this happen. Precisely because they are vulnerable to this kind of thing, airlines go into and out of bankruptcy all the time.
A big reduction in passenger numbers would imply that the value of second-hand planes would fall to zero, so all the costs would be fuel costs.
BTW, Tim you don’t need to talk in terms of passenger-litres, the relevant unit is just litres and the price is going to be similar (net of tax differences) to that of motor fuel.
@BilB
Yes, I agree. Although how dramatic the reduction would be would depend on the rate at which the price increased. I think a 22-fold increase in the fuel price is very unlikely. And a rapid 22-fold price increase is even less likely. A doubling or tripling of the fuel price would be more plausible, but the impact on airfares would be much less significant – perhaps not even significant enough to arrest the growth in air traffic.
@John Quiggin
Right you are. My process led me to think of ‘passenger-litres’, but of course there is no difference.
Now lets have a go at the cost of synfuel (based on, say, switchgrass). Let’s say we want it to be competitive with coal based fuel at $200/barrel and we do this by imposing a $200/tonne carbon tax. That’s roughly equivalent to tripling the input cost of the coal. Finally, suppose refining and processing into aviation fuel costs 50c/litre
A barrel is about 150 litres and a litre of fuel yields about 0.025 tonnes of CO2, so the fuel would cost around $2.50/litre before tax.
To sum up, even with no oil and a whopping carbon tax, we are not going to get anywhere near $16/litre, or, as Tim points out, anywhere near the cost of air travel in the 1970s.
It depends on how you measure global collapse. If measured in orthodox terms like ‘downturn in output (and the corresponding upsurge in oil prices)’ certainly not by 2015. If measured by ecological values such as the rate of deforestation and species extinction, or the loss of biodiversity in general, then global collapse is already well underway. Just because you haven’t hit the ecological refugee trail (yet) doesn’t mean that the collapse of the world economy isn’t happening. It is, just not near you.
BTW, Whitehaven Coal, NSW, has applied to the Planning Assessment Commission, to Minister Pru Goward, to alter its plans for clearing the Leard State Forest to allow for spring clearing which will place numerous native animals at risk in a period when they are rearing their young. This is the last remnant of white box forest, a forest that was almost continuous between the Qld and Vic borders as short a time ago a 1950, and is already regarded as a critically endangered ecological community.
That’s what I understand by global collapse. Not diminished industrial production but a globe entirely given over to the reconstruction of nature for human instrumental purposes. Even if global capital could do this and feed the world, which it won’t, then it will still be a shite world to inhabit.
Before anyone turns up to claim that biofuels are impossible on the basis that they know this in their heart of hearts, let me cut that short by pointing out that hydrogen will do the job as well. Actually, a different synthesised fuel would probably be superior, but hydrogen will do the job and also puts an upper limit on the costs of air travel without any agriculture being required and no need for discussing any complex chemistry.
First, let us consider Turner’s key words:-
“… the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline.”
Therefore 2015 is not the collapse as such. It is the “first appearance” of the “general onset”. In like manner, the first appearance of a mere runny nose can presage a severe or even terminal case of flu. Only in hindsight is it known to have been the start of a flu and not a cold.
A sharp decline in per capita industrial output “begins” in 2015. Any decline following growth begins with the first infinitesimal drop after the peak. At that point the drop is not suddenly and immediately 5% as Prof. J.Q. wants us to call it. And it is not as Prof. J.Q’s. words would have it “a decline … in world industrial output in 2015.” It is a decline in “per capita industrial output” happening from 2015. Those are Turner’s words. I agree with Turner’s paper. I agree that circa 2015 is the starting point in Turner’s terms and definitions.
I will not make a prediction based on Prof. J. Q’s. misconstruction of the onset of collapse by being foolish enough to predict an immediate 5% fall in absolute industrial output in 2015. However, 2015 will likely see the beginning of the decline in per capita industrial output for the world.
In the long term, collapse is biophysically certain and will likely be clearly underway by 2020. The EU periphery, MENA, Pakistan and few other regions are starting to collapse now. But USA and the BRICs are probably still growing (well maybe not the “R” in BRIC). The USA and BRIC growth can only continue for a few short years at best. Absolute world growth I expect will end by 2020. So I will probably lose my 2020 WGP < 2010 WGP bet with our host. If I had made it 2025 WGP < 2010 WGP, I probably would have won. But plus or minus 5 years is nothing in long term history.
LTG logic is irrefutable. The scientists are saying LTG is here. The economists are saying "not yet" or even "not ever". If you believe the economists, I have a perpetual motion machine to sell to you.
When they don’t mention cost it can safely be assumed to be exorbitant
http://wteinternational.com/solar-jet-fuel-could-revolutionize-the-future-of-aviation/
The US Air Force wants to make jet fuel from coal.
Check out Resilience d0t 0rg for Peak Oil updates. A recent article suggests world liquid fuels could decline in volume terms not just energy content from 2016. I think it’s safe to say there will be less oil sold in 2020 than in 2014. After that you’d think it would be a lot less.
And I, despite my relative impecuniousness, managed a pilgrimage to London in the late 1970s. 😉
@Fran Barlow
In time for the S@x Pistols?
@Hermit
I certainly hope so. Peak oil will be a valuable driver of low-carbon technology take-up – if it ever bloody happens! Damn peak oilers and their inaccurate predictions! 😉
OK, Ikonoklast is also in for evident collapse by 2020.
@Hermit I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a reduction in global production/consumption of oil. Consumption in developed countries is already well below its C20 peak. Oil consumption per person (globally) peaked in 1979.
The question is, so what?
The Hirsch report was for global oil production peak in 2015. The main issue is that liquid transport fuel is still not easily/quickly replaced.
“…projecting a decline of 5 per cent or more in world industrial output in 2015, continuing with a sharply declining trend thereafter.”
Put me down for 2017 for the first bit. The second part of that sentence is mirky to predict.
Enthusiasts for dimethyl ether synfuel reckon it will be priced around 80% of LPG (propane/butane) with 60% of the energy. That could be around 65c per litre however that is via the natural gas-methanol route thus fossil fuel based nor I believe subject to excise. Like LPG it needs some compression (15 bar) but these days lightweight tanks can be made from carbon fibre.
To make synfuel from biomass carbon the biggest cost is likely to be hydrogen which if split electrolytically from water comes in about $7 per kg or 500 mol . That cost has to come way down perhaps using high temperature nukes or solar furnaces.
Conceivably a synfuelled passenger plane could do Sydney-London with some extra stops. To see DME powered flight throw a can of hair spray in a fire. Actually don’t do that. They’re going to have to pay European backpackers a lot more to come here and pick fruit.
@iain
The Hirsch report didn’t specify a date for global peak production, but noted that the date was unknown, and that guestimates considered credible at the time ranged from 2006 to after 2025.
One of the main limitations of the Hirsch report was that it assumed that conservation, efficiency and demand-side measures were not possible or desirable (the only ‘conservation’ measures it considered were replacing or retrofitting cars and light trucks with diesel, hybrid or electric drivetrains), and that it was necessary for annual American vehicular travel to continue to increase at the rate at which it had increased for the decade or so leading up to the year of the report (which I think was 2005).
The report’s conclusions should be understood in that light. Obviously, those assumptions were incorrect. I suspect that the limitations of the report arose from the ideological environment of the US government at the time – i.e. any suggestion that Americans should drive less, or use smaller cars, was anathema.
@John Quiggin
The LTG model is seriously flawed (as I commented in the global warming thread). According to the model, severe resource depletion (of which non-renewables like oil are a big part) began their rapid downward slop 2 decades ago. Now we see oil reserves stretching out many decades into the future. The other LTG variables which are about to collapse are industrial output per capita (this will be a big surprise to China) and food per capita.
As you have pointed out, models that try and act as a crystal ball are flawed. To me they are nothing but white noise.
@John Quiggin
John, as an agricultural economist you will be familiar with Liebig’s Law of the Minimum. Growth or de-growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available but by the scarcest essential resource (the limiting factor). Liebig’s Law will surely apply to the world economy at some point.
There are some resources which are essential and non-substitutable when it comes to human biology and the human economy. The first resource in this category is energy. Nothing can substitute for energy. This is a both a physics law and a truism by definition but not trival for all that. However, while nothing can substitute for energy, different forms of energy can directly substitute in some cases or indirectly substitute in others by transforming energy types at the cost of some lost exergy. Exergy is the energy available for useful work. If we can substitute solar and wind power on a broad scale for the old non-renewable sources we can solve our energy problem.
Fresh water is also essential and non-substitutable when it comes to human biology, ecology in general and food production in particular. Again, different “forms” of water are available in the sense that seawater is available for substitution if it can be desalinated. Desalination requires energy. The fresh water problem looks like being even more serious than the energy problem. I think as an agricultural economist you will appreciate the fresh water problems which are beginning to confront certain regions of the world. You would also be aware of the serious decline of freshwater lakes, rivers and aquifers around the world.
“Three years of research show that by the year 2040 there will not be enough water in the world to quench the thirst of the world population and keep the current energy and power solutions going if we continue doing what we are doing today,” said Bejamin Sovacool, director of the Center for Energy Technology at Aarhus University in reference to the dual reports released Tuesday.
The report recommended that nuclear power and coal, which use an excessive amount of water for cooling purposes, should where possible be replaced by wind and solar, which use virtually no water.
The research stated that “electricity generation from thermoelectric power plants is inextricably linked to water resources.”
In many countries, including the energy-guzzling US, energy production is by far the biggest source of water consumption, bigger even than agriculture. In 2005 41 percent of all water used in the US was for thermoelectric cooling.” – RT News.
By the by, it’s instructive that the energy and water crises are so clocley linked and they both point to the need for solar and wind power. However, key areas of the world are being impacted by water crises now.
“Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world’s population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world’s population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers).
Water scarcity is among the main problems to be faced by many societies and the World in the XXIst century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.” – UN Water for Life Project.
There might not be a global fresh water shortage yet but there are certainly serious regional shortages occurring now or very imminent. Fresh water will be a key limiting factor along with and in conjunction with energy issues. Following on from that, these problems will manifest as food shortages in the poorer regions.
Let’s go retro-Stalinist and use Material Product. I’m in for Peak Global Material Product per capita by 2020. The proxy, as with the Big Mac index, is simply the weight of GDP. Growth will dematerialize. But this is a Pollyanna story. The dematerialized components of national income can grow without limit. Whether the prospect of people spending 90% of their consumption like today’s super-rich on restaurants, designer clothes and drugs, and tickets to rock concerts makes sense is another matter. At some point the Culture stops bothering with money.
I’m with Hanrahan on this. We’ll all be rooned.
However I wonder if the thing that will get us will be the rise of silly beliefs, of which Prof Q’s zombies are one sort.
And of course with the Russians going crazy, maybe it will be the nukes that get us.
On the positive side, birth rates are falling, and if we survive peak population later this century, we may come out ok.
@James Wimberley
“Growth will dematerialize.” Europe plus US is about 1 billion people of a current world population of 7 billion. There’s a lot of material goods to be acquired yet.
@Ikonoclast
Up around the Narrabri area the issue with water is how the coal mines will draw down the aquifer which, on the basis of local knowledge and in the absence of scientific data, looks like being too much for ongoing and sustainable agricultural production.
Water wars. What joy the future promises!
@John Brookes
Are the Russians going crazy? Or have they been provoked by US/NATO encirclement? I would say it’s the latter. There is no group on this planet more crazy than the US MIPE (Military Industrial Political Elite). We need GORT – “Genetically Organized Robotic Technology” to sort us out.
“Klaatu barada nikto.” – My suggestion for translation is “Klaatu commands no.”
For those who don’t know, I am referencing the the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.
@Ikon in some places evaporative cooling for thermal plant may use too much fresh water while other places have water to spare. Qld’s Kogan Ck and Milmerran coal stations use closed loop radiators like a petrol engined car. Some desert solar thermal plants need water for top up and washing mirrors. Rather than cooling towers thermal plant on the coast can use condenser tubes immersed in seawater.
An example was California’s San Onofre nuclear plant. See the image in the link whereby beachgoers oblivious to the mortal danger walk their dogs nearby
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calif-utility-to-retire-troubled-san-onofre-nuclear-power-plant/
California banned once-through water cooling ostensibly to save fresh water but justified it for seawater cooling as it was supposed to harm fish larvae. They have a wonderful approach now…import coal power from over the state border where the emissions are unseen.
There are some interesting predator-prey models of civilization collapse that model the relationship between ruled and ruler as predator-prey with the predator able to build up a stock of resources it can draw down upon; these models, it is argued, offer a description of past societal collapses (such as the Mayans). A key part of these models is that as the productivity of the prey (the ruled) declines, the predators are able to keep consuming from their stored resources, and don’t see the trouble coming until its too late. Maybe they should be renamed pollyanna-prey models; or rich economist-low income labourer models.
It also seems to me, just looking around at what is going on in the world, that some social harbingers of collapse can be inferred. Most particularly, we have a belt of chaos and destruction ranging from the border of Tunisia in the West to the border of Iran in the East. The societies falling apart at the seams in that little band of chaos are often very lacking in non-fossil fuel resources (particularly water and agricultural land). It’s often said that the Arab spring was precipitated by changes in food laws and subsidies. Perhaps they’re a good model for what happens when there is a large imbalance between ecosystem services and the demand placed on them?
Do we think that the GDP-per-capita statistics in the area controlled by Islamic State, or the Misrata militia, have been rising?
Then we have California, trapped in a once-in-a-millenium drought with no clear signs of how it can break, and no efforts underway to even conserve water – the drought continues to spread and unless they get an unprecedented snowfall this winter will likely still hold most of California in its grip. There is no current sustainable solution to a lack of water. Desalination has been suggested but the possibility that desalination can be implemented on a scale necessary to provide water to 20 million people and support some of the largest agricultural sectors in the country is pretty slim. No one’s talking about what will happen in California if the snows don’t come for two more years. Is that collapse?
There is a lot of talk on this thread about increases in the price of plane tickets. That’s not collapse; that’s first world problems. No one in Western Iraq right now cares two hoots about the price of plane tickets; they’re more worried about the insane death cult that has come rampaging out of a failed state. That’s what collapse looks like, and the question we should be asking is how deep are the environmental roots of that collapse?
I was at a talk late last year and the defence researcher member of the panel said the Arab Spring is being talked about in defence circles as the first climate change social /political unrest. I think this was explained as due to the drought that caused Russian grain crops to fail, Russia limited grain exports as a result, and food prices spiked in the Middle East.
@ZM
ZM…the crucial variables, Resources, Food Per Capita, and Industrial Output per Capita, start their inexorable plunge shortly beyond the middle of the y-axis (the middle would be the year 2000). I personally worked with some of these models and tweeked variables to determine different outcomes. It would be a pretty cool tool if it worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
Yes exactly. Pollyanna Keynesians are up to their old tricks.
Presumably 2015 was a pretty good guess given the data available in the late 60’s and early 70’s. But I don’t think honest readers would now hold them to 2015 specifically.
Arguing about timelines is not the point.
This is a provocation by denialists.
The science is now in – once the rest of the world demands the same level of per capita resource use as in the developed world, and with population growth, the system must collapse.
Capitalism is based on exponential growth. That’s the core problem.
Quiggin’s generation had it all. Are they going to leave future generations with nothing?
@kevin1
There is something in this. But look at the trend in China: coal and pig iron production have already gone flat, at a GDP per head a third of the OECD average. What do status-conscious African youths aspire to more – a car or an iPhone?
I cannot really see a collapse by next year but it seems that most people here are assuming a relatively benign climate. I am not all that confident past 2025 or 2030. I have not read the LtG report (well since about 1974) so it may cover some of my points as did faustus.
I’d suggest that something we need take into account is catastrophic weather (Queensland Floods, Calgary Canada floods, the lovely Toronto Ice Storm, drought such as hit much of Australia a few years ago plus the nasty US Midwest drought last year. And I think the jury is still out on this, I would not be surprised to see more tornatos in the USA.
Coastal flooding is likely to pose a much more serious risk (well almost everywhere but especially places like some parts of Vietnam, Bangladesh and Southern Florida are not likely to be around much longer and all it takes is one more hurricane just a bit bigger than the last one to take out good bit of New York City and maybe a few other places along the east coast of North America.
While none of these, probably even in combination, seem likely to bring about a total collapse they are all going to reduce our room for manoeuvre. Losing the Vietnamese rice crops alone is serious and all we need is a few adverse weather events to put serious strain on food supplies, transportation of goods, and probably energy supplies because we cannot move them.
About then we start getting civil unrest, mass migrations, and the price of an airline ticket is immaterial.
Seems to me that nobody is prepared to make a prediction in terms specific enough that it will be possible to determine after the event whether the prediction came true — not specific enough for a bet on it to be made and then settled one way or the other. That may be wise.
On the other hand, making predictions so general that there’ll never be agreement on whether they came true doesn’t strike me as wise. Better to make no predictions at all.
Here is a graphical comparison to the Limits to Growth model
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-back-on-the-limits-of-growth-125269840/
Reality is tracking the model reasonably well, based on Turner’s work.
@Ivor
Prof. John Quiggin is of the same generation as me. I admit I too have been critical of my own generation at times. (I am a late baby-boomer born in 1954.) However, if we correctly apply Marxist analysis to capitalism we will see that generational blaming is beside the point. What is happening is entirely consistent with the inner workings of Capital. Capitalism is tending as predicted to oligarchy, monopoly, empire and the destruction of all values other than the value of capital and its concentration in fewer and fewer hands. Without strong socially interventionist, financially re-distributionist and properly democratic nation states (which are countervailing forces), we are simply witnessing the standard tendencies of capitalism.
Capitalism suffers from both internal and external contradictions. The topic here is the issue of external contradictions. Capitalism, under its inevitable oligarchic control, demands and requires endless growth. This endless growth requirement is in contradiction with the natural limits to growth.
Now, I would like to make another prediction. When the collapse happens everyone will be proved right in their own mind. What I mean is all the groupings will claim collapse proves them right:
(1) Limits to Growth theorists will say it proves the limits to growth thesis correct.
(2) Nuclear power advocates will say it happened because we did not adopt enough nuclear power.
(3) Fossil fuel advocates will say we did not subsidise fossil fuels enough.
(4) Wind and solar advocates will say we did not subsidise W&S enough.
(5) Libertarians and neocons will say we did not free the markets enough.
(6) Capitalists will say we paid too much welfare and did not assist business enough.
(7) Marxists will say we did not socialise the economy soon enough (or at all).
(8) Environmentalists and thermoeconomists will say we did pay nearly enough attention to biological and physical laws and their constraints on human population and economy.
(9) The religious will say we ignored their deity of choice.
Empirically speaking, some of these views will be true, some false and some untestable. But the great majority of human beings do not make considered judgements on empirical evidence at the best of times. They will be even less objective when panicked, hungry and angry. Take a look at Pakistan currently. Work has been done (at MIT I think) on correlating food price spikes and shortages with civil unrest and revolutions. The correlation is strong.
@BilB
The computer run that is pictured in this article, is NOT the same one that is used on pg 124 of the 1972 book. Keep in mind that there where at least a half dozen runs with different outcomes. The one in this article was obviously one of the more optimistic scenerios where policy makers were actually heeding the policy recommendations.
@Ikonoclast