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The Limits to Growth — Malthus Revived

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The Limits to Growth — Malthus Revived A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Karsten, Detlev Article — Digitized Version The limits to growth — Malthus revived Intereconomics Suggested Citation: Karsten, Detlev (1972) : The limits to growth — Malthus revived, Intereconomics, ISSN 0020-5346, Verlag Weltarchiv, Hamburg, Vol. 07, Iss. 11, pp. 343-345, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02929666 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/138733 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Economic Growth The Limits to Growth- Malthus Revived by Dr Detlev Karsten, Stuttgart* The publication of =The Limits to Growth - A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predica- ment of Mankind" has resulted in a world-wide discussion of this vital Issue. The following article reviews different aspects of the study. he authors-Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. living which is equivalent to the present level of T Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Beh- consumption of the highly developed European rens Ill-try to prove two things. One is the exis- nations, and quite possibly even this standard tence of global limits to growth, and the other is cannot be reached by all people. If, for social the already pressing importance of these limits reasons, a fair distribution is also desired, this for our present day behaviour. Their reasoning necessitates a reduction of levels of consumption rests on the observation of past trends of popula- in some of the already industrialised countries. tion growth, of depletion of nonrenewable re- sources, of food production, of industrial produc- It is the thesis of the study that this predicament tion and of environmental pollution. On account of mankind can only be solved by conscious ac- of the exponential growth which characterised tion to bring about this equilibrium. The sooner the development of these factors in the past it is a determined effort is made, the better are the hardly surprising that a model which is based on chances to reach the equilibrium state, and the extrapolation and which allows for interaction be- higher will be the then possible standard of living tween these elements predicts a collapse of the for all mankind. An attitude of complacency, on whole system: famines, decline of medical care the other hand, will result in disaster. and the adverse health effects of environmental pollution result in reduced life expectancy, in an Interest to General PubUc absolute decrease of population and in a very much depressed standard of living. All this will Although little of the arguing is new, the study happen within the next 100 years even under the deserves credit for having aroused the interest most optimistic assumptions of the development of the general public on a much larger scale than of the key factors. any other similarly apocalyptic vision that could be compared to this book. It is quite possible Mobillsatlon of Counteracting Forces that a more sophisticated approach could have made the study useless for this important purpose. The intention of this demonstration is to mobilise Even more refined methods would only have con- counteracting forces which would help to reach firmed the resulting message of the book: To use a situation of global equilibrium. Such an equilib- Boulding's famous illustration-mankind has out- rium can only be attained if zero population grown the time of the prairie-economy and has growth becomes a reality. The possible level of reached the period of spaceship economy-,there wellbeing will then depend on the careful utilisa- is a need to adjust universal behaviour to these tion of the truly scarce factors: the limited capac- facts. ity to produce food, the limited raw material supply, and the limited absorptive capacity of the If one agrees with the objectives and the general environment for pollutants. According to the au- conclusions of the study, criticism is difficult. thors, even the prudent use of available re- There are, however, a few points that seem to sources-what includes widespread recycling- require comment. will allow for all mankind at best a standard of It can be argued that two of the basic difficulties * Institute for Social Economics, University of Stuttgart. -environmental pollution and exhaustion of indus- INTERECONOMICS, No. 11, 1972 343 l ECONOMIC GROWTH trial raw materials-could be solved, or at least logical equilibrium means another limit to growth. be very much alleviated, by utilising more energy. This, however, is a limit of which we only know This leads to the problem of energy supply. Again that in all probability it exists, but we do not there is a question of a possible exhaustion of know where it is. The apparent calculability of the existing sources of energy. But here one can the limits given in the study has exactly this argue that nuclear fusion reactors are "just shortcoming: that it cannot take into account this around the corner". And that could mean an end limit which evades calculation, but which never- of the world-wide shortage of energy. An optimist theless could become effective before any one may then conclude that this changes everything: of the other calculated limits is reached. The fact Wlth abundant energy the limits of growth can be that this point is barely touched upon in the book extended. can either be attributed to the assumed irrele- vance of the argument-in which case this should But it is widely recognised that even this devel- have been stated-or it is a major and dangerous opment would take the world only to another neglect. limit - given not any longer by the exhaustion of the energy supply, but by the fact that amounts Necessary Self Restraint of energy which reach the order of magnitude of the incident solar energy cannot be absorbed by It is one of the main arguments of the book that the environment without endangering the universal the equilibrium state can only be reached if man- ecological balance. Even an increase of tempera- kind exercises a certain amount of self restraint. ture of 10~ Centigrade would change living con- With other words, the present standard of living ditions intolerably. Although this issue is still of the most highly developed countries is the being debated, there is a distinct possibility that absolute maximum thinkable if we envisage also we have here a more fundamental limit to growth a fair distribution. This argument leads to a re- than the ones suggested in the study for the Club markable characteristic of the book - which is, of Rome. Of course this argument supports the on the one hand, its strength and presumably main thesis of the book. But there is the danger responsible for its success but which can also be that some people see only the possibility of ex- considered a weakness. This is the basically tending the limits further by the utilisation of "technological" reasoning without many social energy. Because they do not realise that this considerations. At least to the ordinary reader takes mankind to another limit they may dismiss the logical link between the limitation of industrial the important conclusion of the book-the call for production and the impairment of the standard action-as premature because it is based on un- of living seems obvious enough. Apart from the justified pessimism. shift in emphasis to services in the future pattern of consumption, which is dealt with in the book, Ecological Dangers there appears to be a definite possibility that a different supply of products-which in costs (raw The study gives the impression that the limits to material and energy consumption, environmental growth can be determined by computer calcula- pollution, etc.) may be equivalent to the present tion. Such a view looses sight of another imme- supply-may result in a much higher standard of diately imminent danger. This is the problem that living. we are now exposing ourselves and our environ- To substantiate this reasoning: There is no ques- ment to over half a million different chemicals, tion that increasing environmental pollution in- all of which must eventually be imposed on the duces the production of certain items whose only earth environment. And this number is estimated purpose is to protect against the effects of pol- to be increasing by 400-500 new chemicals per lution. Typical examples are a considerable pro- year. These new substances include since World portion of expenditures for cleaning devices, most War II synthetic pesticides, plastics, antibiotics, of the non-corrosive facade-coverings, traffic that radio isotopes, detergents and industrially made is generated by the desire to escape into healthier hormons. surroundings, etc. Similar effects can be observed For most of these things the possible effects on in the sphere of production: Pollution of surface the ecology are unknown, and many of them may waters leads to higher costs of water purification be new DDT cases or may have even stronger and necessitates the construction of swimming destructive effects.
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