# "Global economic collapse" by 2030?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 6, 2012, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054 "2012-05-06T08:24:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2012, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/1 "2012-05-06T08:24:03Z")
Ran across [this article](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html) which discusses an MIT study done in the 1970’s that modeled population growth and resource consumption. It predicted “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” by 2030 if “drastic measures for environmental protection” were not taken. The article notes that as far as the report is concerned, its models are still on track now, in 2012.
Apparently, this study caused controversy even back then, so it seems to be at least mildly well-known (though I’d never heard of it). Anyone know more about it? Are its conclusions reliable?
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2012, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/2 "2012-05-06T08:42:43Z")
There were dozens of such studies published in the 1970s - most of them predicted total collapse by 1990. If anything, the study in question was hedging its bets.
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### Author:  [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2012, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/3 "2012-05-06T21:45:59Z")
Its your typical “Everybody will be starving by the year x” studies inspired the _Population Bomb_.
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2012, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/4 "2012-05-07T05:13:19Z")
The study made a big splash during the 1970s: it was called [The Limits to Growth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth). It put forth a computerized model of the economy as designed by physicists. Since the team lacked economists, the model did not reflect substitution effects or AFAIK a price mechanism: raw materials would simply become scarce.
I am dubious about the claim that the model is “Right on track”. The original paper predicted food production would peak in 1994 and then fall by 40% over the next 3 decades. Industrial production would peak in 2010, then fall about 4% annually.[1] Sorry, but this Lesser Depression hasn’t been kicked off by raw material scarcity: it’s an aggregate demand problem.
Don’t get me wrong. The world might be going to hell. But if it is, I say it will be because of unpriced factors of production, specifically emissions of CO2. Although I would also support extraction taxes for technical and contentious reasons. Regardless, economic models that are devoid of economics aren’t likely to provide well grounded insight.
[1] From:
Google: “Nordhaus lethal model limits growth revisitied” for a 1992 Brookings paper.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2012, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/5 "2012-05-07T13:21:18Z")
So is 2030 when the killer bees finally get us?
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/6 "2012-05-07T13:40:22Z")
Here’s an interesting [article](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/computation-and-the-human-predicament) from American Scientist on the 3rd iteration on the World3 model behind Limits. Basically Limits’ argument boils down to things that increase exponentially eventually stop.
> [@](#):
>
> First, the book’s message is worth listening to. There are limits, and exponential growth is unsustainable. A society that measures well-being by the first derivative of GDP is asking for trouble…
>
> As for the mathematical model behind the book, I believe it is more a polemical tool than a scientific instrument. Forrester and the Limits group have frequently said that the graphs drawn by their computer programs should not be taken as predictions of the future, but only as indicating “dynamic tendencies” or “behavior modes.” But despite these disclaimers, Limits is full of blunt statements about the future: “If the present growth trends continue unchanged,… the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the next one hundred years.” And whether the models are supposed to be predictive or not, they are offered as an explicit guide to public policy.
>
> It’s possible that Forrester was offering wise advice, and someday we’ll regret not taking it. But when a mathematical or scientific argument is brought forward to justify taking such a painful and troubling action, standards of rigor will surely be set very high.
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2012, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/7 "2012-05-09T23:29:50Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> So is 2030 when the killer bees finally get us?
_ **And** _ Comet Kohoutek crashes into us, utterly destroying what remains of civilization except, miraculously, all the Burger King outlets and all the RC Cola bottling plants.
All kidding aside, though, I’m guardedly pessimistic about our future prospects. It is true that market forces eventually will, or should, force changeovers to lifestyles that are more sustainable. These most likely need to include not only alternative options for powering our transport systems and power grids, but also lifestyle choices to reduce collective consumption and procreation. A fact that often gets overlooked is that we don’t actually need to run out of fuel or food before our numbers will adversely affect our lives. We’ve already seen this at a regional level in many places.
Taking my own city, L.A. as an example: the post WWII generation was able to buy cheap houses on the west side or just over the hill in the east SFV. To a much greater extent than later generations, they could even buy near or on the beach; by doing so, they often had to sacrifice some floor space or other amenities, but having a house near the beach was still a choice one could make. But as the population increased, succeeding generations wanting to own houses had to go farther and farther out. These people still have all the appurtenances of the American Dream–in fact, they have generally larger houses than preceding generations. They also have more automobiles per family and those cars are mostly much safer, more technologically advanced, and more efficient than the cars of sixty years ago. But…many of them have to spend a lot more time in those cars just to travel back and forth between work and home. Admittedly this is a subjective evaluation on my part, but I consider that to represent a degradation in quality of life. I don’t hate driving or cars generally, but being stuck on the 405 isn’t my idea of a good time, and shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath as a lonely state highway with almost no traffic and breathtaking views.
To be fair, there are benefits to population growth. The diversity of cultures locally has certainly made life here more interesting, and along with the doubling of population the availability of cultural amenities has much more than doubled. We finally voted to fund mass transit besides buses, and while such a system can only do so much, it will offer some additional choices.
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### Author:  [@Section\_Maker\_Jupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Section_Maker_Jupe)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/8 "2012-05-10T00:03:51Z")
…I took a class on the Limits to Growth(Club of Rome) in the '70s, in one of the first Enviornmental Studies classes in the U.C. system.
There was no economic model involved. Just supply versus consumption rates. . Supply was assumed to be fixed. (big assumption that!!) and consumption was either static or increased.
I was pretty clueless then, as it seemed to make some sense.:smack:
Jupe
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### Author:  [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/9 "2015-05-31T13:18:35Z")
An update on the matter:
> **[Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse | Cathy...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse)**
>
> Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander: Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon
i.e., historical data tracking forecasts.
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### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/10 "2015-05-31T14:00:04Z")
> [@ralfy](#):
>
> An update on the matter:
>
> [Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse | Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander | The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse)
>
> i.e., historical data tracking forecasts.
That isn’t an update, it is the same story with the same source (Graham Turner) just in a different news outlet.
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### Author:  [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/11 "2015-05-31T14:12:22Z")
> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> That isn’t an update, it is the same story with the same source (Graham Turner) just in a different news outlet.
The report is from 2014.
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### Author:  [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/12 "2015-05-31T14:14:16Z")
I predict that we’ll solve global warming in 2032, end world hunger in in 2035, eliminate poverty in 2036, and be wiped out by a comet in 2037, foiling the killer bee’s plans for 2039.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/13 "2015-05-31T17:42:17Z")
Always remember that any prediction of the future has to take into account it’s own existence, and how that will effect future decisions.
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### Author:  [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/14 "2015-05-31T18:14:09Z")
Economists are so great!
Growth is increasing cash flow but their version of Net Domestic Product does not subtract the depreciation of all of the durable consumer goods.
How much have Americans lost on the depreciation of the 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1995? Would physicists forget that? But economists have failed to discuss it for 60 years.
[http://www.spectacle.org/1199/wargame.html](http://www.spectacle.org/1199/wargame.html)
psik
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/15 "2015-05-31T20:19:57Z")
Wow. Citing a banned poster. Badass.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/16 "2015-05-31T20:47:52Z")
Maybe “Dal Tigmar” is actually a common name, like the Armenian equivalent of “John Smith” or something.
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### Author:  [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2015, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/17 "2015-05-31T21:27:19Z")
If you keep predicting economic catastrophe you’ll eventually be right.
A system where people set their hair on fire if there isn’t perpetual 3-4% annual growth probably isn’t the best idea for the long term.
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### Author:  [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/18 "2015-06-01T01:34:15Z")
You can’t argue there aren’t ultimate, ultimate limits. But, those limits would be reached when humanity :
For raw materials :
1. Has mined out the entire earth’s crust, the ocean floor, the entire Moon except for the core, Mercury, Mars and it’s moons, all the moons of Jupiter, all the asteroids, Pluto, and a half dozen other astronomical bodies I haven’t named.
For energy
2. Has converted about half the raw materials available from #1 into solar arrays, in orbits that are always exposed to the sun so that no batteries are needed. The resulting power would get beamed around with microwaves or maybe just superconducting bus lines that are thousands of kilometers long. (you can make superconductors work great in the cold vacuum of space…)
Oh, we’re many orders of magnitude below that? We’re just arguing whether or not we’re about to run out of a really easy to use energy source that comes from hydrocarbons in a particular form? Oh. Well, carry on panicking then.
You know, if the shit really hit the fan, we could stop using cars and trucks completely, and use electrified roadways instead. Everything would run off of some kind of hard connection to the grid. (well, since that many electric contacts would cause a lot of wear, we could have induction charging strips in the roadway, and supercapacitors on the cars. Basically, on the highway, there’d be like a kilometer or something of highway and then 100 meters of induction charging coils. The cars would get juiced up whenever they pass over the coils. These coils would also be at every intersection in inner streets. Zero battery longevity problems, only need enough capacitors for 10 miles of range or so.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/19 "2015-06-01T02:46:21Z")
> [@Habeed](#):
>
> You can’t argue there aren’t ultimate, ultimate limits. But, those limits would be reached when humanity :
>
> For raw materials :
>
> 1. Has mined out the entire earth’s crust, the ocean floor, the entire Moon except for the core, Mercury, Mars and it’s moons, all the moons of Jupiter, all the asteroids, Pluto, and a half dozen other astronomical bodies I haven’t named. . . .
That’s pretty silly. Long before we’ve “mined out” the earth, we’d have hit shortages of affordable metals and minerals. What are you going to build your core-drilling machinery out of, when you’ve stripped the earth’s crust of all metals? What will you build your mining rockets out of, in order to get to Pluto?
The concept of “marginal utility” or “diminishing returns” puts your ideas here to nonsense.
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### Author:  [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-economic-collapse-by-2030/621054/20 "2015-06-01T03:03:29Z")
> [@Habeed](#):
>
> You can’t argue there aren’t ultimate, ultimate limits. But, those limits would be reached when humanity :
>
> For raw materials :
>
> 1. Has mined out the entire earth’s crust, the ocean floor, the entire Moon except for the core, Mercury, Mars and it’s moons, all the moons of Jupiter, all the asteroids, Pluto, and a half dozen other astronomical bodies I haven’t named.
>
> For energy
> 2. Has converted about half the raw materials available from #1 into solar arrays, in orbits that are always exposed to the sun so that no batteries are needed. The resulting power would get beamed around with microwaves or maybe just superconducting bus lines that are thousands of kilometers long. (you can make superconductors work great in the cold vacuum of space…)
>
> Oh, we’re many orders of magnitude below that? We’re just arguing whether or not we’re about to run out of a really easy to use energy source that comes from hydrocarbons in a particular form? Oh. Well, carry on panicking then.
>
> You know, if the shit really hit the fan, we could stop using cars and trucks completely, and use electrified roadways instead. Everything would run off of some kind of hard connection to the grid. (well, since that many electric contacts would cause a lot of wear, we could have induction charging strips in the roadway, and supercapacitors on the cars. Basically, on the highway, there’d be like a kilometer or something of highway and then 100 meters of induction charging coils. The cars would get juiced up whenever they pass over the coils. These coils would also be at every intersection in inner streets. Zero battery longevity problems, only need enough capacitors for 10 miles of range or so.
Resources that are too deep cannot be extracted or mined if the energy costs are too high. That’s why even with lots of oil from conventional production we still ended up resorting to shale oil, and only when prices increased.
When prices went up, the global economy also weakened, and propped up with quantitative easing, which means more of the same credit that caused the economy to crash in 2008. When QE started unwinding, commodity prices dropped, which in turn caused rig count drops for shale oil.
Thus, the catch is that we need cheap (i.e., easily accessible) resources and energy. Even alternative energy will require that, as fossil fuels will be needed for mining, manufacturing, and shipping of components for renewable energy. The same goes for space exploration.
Otherwise, the global population adjusts in terms of numbers and consumption to limitations of the biosphere.
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