2.2 Resource Management and Sustainable Development 13
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2.2.2 Sustainability as Limit to Growth?
When Meadows et al. (1972) published their report, “The Limits to growth”, for the
Club of Rome, the broader public was confronted with the thought that only limited
growth is possible on a finite planet with finite resources. Although the publication
is not the first one to address this topic it was probably the most successful at gaining
significant public attention. As the title of the book suggests, the authors depict a
scenario for the future in which the death rate decreases, birth rates increase and the
demand for food and other products grow to a point of collapse where resources are
depleted and a lack of food and health issues eradicate a large part of human kind.
The model of Meadows and colleagues examines the interaction of the following
five subsystems: population, pollution, non-renewable resources, food and industrial
output. In their scenario, even under the assumption that society learns to more
efficiently conserve nonrenewable resources, the collapse will come due to pollution.
The growing world population and the consequently increased demand for food and
other goods will lead to problems in food production erasing three-quarters of the
world’s population (Meadows et al. 1972). The authors come to the conclusion that
the only possible way to avoid this collapse is to introduce policies to force people
to have fewer children and to limit general consumption. Consequently, this might
lead to a significant loss in well-fare and a materialistically poorer society. With
regards to their calculations, Meadows and his coauthors examined 19 resources
of which twelve were going to run short within the next 40 years. They assumed
an on-going exponential growth in demand and even included in their analysis an
assumption that reserves will be five times as high as known to date. However, their
result indicated that short running on these resources can only be extended by a few
decades. The knowledge one has today shows that assumptions in the report have
been incorrect. Reserves of critical resources (as defined by Meadows et al. 1972)
are still available today, some even at a higher amount than what was available 40
years ago. This can be explained by taking petroleum as an example. In the report
of 1972 the known reserves of petroleum were 500 billion barrel. 40 years later the
used amount of petroleum is 760 billion and the estimated reserves are at 1.2 trillion
barrel. The paradox of how increased demand can lead to increased reserves can be
explained easily. Increased demand leads to higher prices which makes depletion,
even in areas which are difficult to access, economically beneficial. Furthermore,
new extraction technologies, effective exploitation of oilfields and the discovery of
new fields can explain the above paradox (Fücks 2013).
The book from Meadows et al. received a high amount of attention which helpedin initiating a discussion on the environmental concerns. This debate deals with
the depletion of resources and how demand for food and other products can be