"LIMITS TO GROWTH": DISCREDITED BUT STILL DAMAGING

A reader writes:

This article (PDF format -- summary here) is a little long and the first half may be a little dry, but it provides a very comprehensive treatment of the Limits to Growth scare from the 1970s that has essentially underpinned "environmentalism" ever since.

Marxsen discusses many of the weaknesses of the model and, turning to the real world, argues that it may have become a "self fulfilling prophecy" for all the wrong reasons. Marxsen details how economic growth and prosperity are now being undermined by green tape. His conclusion packs a punch.

"....Environmental catastrophism has driven a massive expansion of the regulatory state, and environmental regulations may have proved sufficient to wipe out almost fully the U.S. multifactor productivity growth that comes from technological progress. Unfortunately, our now stunted productivity growth was theoretically all that stood between modern civilization and the inexorable decline and deterioration that population growth and natural-resource depletion themselves might theoretically bring about. Paradoxically, the otherwise dubious prophetic vision of The Limits to Growth remains potentially akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy, threatening to help usher in a slow-motion version of the very scenarios of collapsing modern society that its models portray..."

The Limits to Growth report was in many respects the brainchild of computer systems pioneer Jay Forrester and was based on his "systems dynamics" ideas which he ambitiously applied to everything from businesses and schools to cities and the whole planet. See here. It was published by the prestigous international think tank "The Club of Rome" founded in 1968 by FIAT industrialist Aurelio Peccei (a brief history is here) and in vulgarised fashion become the Bible of the growing environmentalist movement (even if like the Bible, most followers hadn't actually read it!).

Marxsen mentions some of the work of the late, great economist Mancur Olson. Olson is little known outside of the economics profession but he deserves a wider audience. This article on the sluggish economic performance of Japan and Germany discusses one of Olson's themes, how consensus among powerful vested interests harms national prosperity ("economic barnacles on the hull of society").

This author also mentions to Olson and provides a neat discussion of the popularly repeated myth that big corporations have economic power in excess of whole nations.

By the way here is a great site (in quality of content, if not presentation!) by Stanford computer scientist Jim McCarthy, a technological optimist who addresses dozens of doomsday scenarios.

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