Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?

Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?

Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of a possible catastrophic course for human civilization in the 21st century – a collapse of socioeconomic order and massive drop in human population. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed for overshoot—and a splat that could kill billions. Don’t look now but we are running in midair, a new book asserts. In 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (Chelsea Green Publishing), Jorgen Randers of the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and one of the original World3 modelers, argues that the second half of the 21st century will bring us near apocalypse in the form of severe global warming.