Beyond the Limits

Forest and Bird, Issue 266, 1 November 1992, Page 36

Beyond the Limits

Donald Scott

by Donella and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers (Earthscan Publications) $29.95, This is the most significant book I’ve come across for a long time. Twenty years ago the authors wrote The Limits to Growth. This examined the long-term consequences of economic and population growth and, because the conclusions pointed to a collapse of the world that we know, it caused a furore. It also sold nine million copies in 29 languages. Now the authors have returned to the fray. They believe that their earlier conclusions are | still valid: human population and the use of resources are approaching the limits of a finite earth. In fact for many resource and pollution flows the limits have already been passed. In many areas it is not necessarily depletion of resources which define the limits, but rather the ability of the planet’s natural systems to process the wastes. Hence global warming and the ozone hole. They argue, using a range of assumptions and computer models, that without reductions in the throughput of material and energy the next century will see. a dramatic decline in food sup- | plies and industrial production. There is a choice for a sustainable future, however, but the difficulties in such a transition are not underestimated by the authors: "We think it is technically and economically possible, maybe even easy, but we also know it is psychologically and politically daunting. So much hope, so much of the modern industrial culture, has been built on the premise of perpetual material growth." It is also worth noting the foreword by Nobel laureate Jan Tinbergen: "Market economies are obviously in need of some intervention in order to provide public goods, to avoid too much inequality, and to approach sustainability". The message in the book is particularly relevant to New Zealand with its new Resource Management Act. There are some hard fights ahead for Forest and Bird and sister organisations — this could be just the weapon you need.