The Club of Rome - report - China's Population Control

Human Rights in China

The Club of Rome - report - China's Population Control

Wed Apr 19, 2006 14:23

Archive - Club of Rome
The Club of Rome - report 'Limits To Growth' ... The population has access to 100 percent effective birth control. 2. The average desired family size is two ...
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The Club of Rome
The population explosion in the South and the ageing of the populations of the North, ... Bertrand Schneider published the Club of Rome Report The Barefoot ...
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Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ)
Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) discusses human rights in China.
4/19/2006: WASHINGTON, DC: 45 min.

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Contact: Joseph D'Agostino, Population Research Institute, 540-622-5240 x 204, jad@pop.org

The Limits to Growth
The Club of Rome's depopulation agenda exposed by their own documents
Abstract established by Eduard Pestel. A Report to The Club of Rome (1972),
by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III

Short Version of the Limits to Growth

Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern � accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment.

The model we have constructed is, like every model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished.

In spite of the preliminary state of our work, we believe it is important to publish the model and our findings now. (...) We feel that the model described here is already sufficiently developed to be of some use to decision-makers. Furthermore, the basic behavior modes we have already observed in this model appear to be so fundamental and general that we do not expect our broad conclusions to be substantially altered by further revisions.

Our conclusions are :

1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability
that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic
material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his
individual human potential.

If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin
working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.

All five elements basic to the study reported here--population, food production, and consumption of
nonrenewable natural resources--are increasing. The amount of their increase each year follows a pattern
that mathematicians call exponential growth.

A quantity exhibits exponential growth when it increases by a constant percentage of the whole in a
constant time period.

Such exponential growth is a common process in biological, financial, and many other systems of the
world.

Exponential growth is a dynamic phenomenon, which means that it involves elements that change over time.
(...) When many different quantities are growing simultaneously in a system, however, and when all the
quantities are interrelated in a complicated way, analysis of the causes of growth and of the future behavior
of the system becomes very difficult indeed.

Over the course of the last 30 years there has evolved at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a new
method for understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems. The method is called System
Dynamics. The basis of the method is the recongnition that the structure of any system--the many circular,
interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components--is often just as important in
determining its behavior as the individual components themselves. The world model described in this book is
a System Dynamics model

Extrapolation of present trends is a time-honored way of looking into the future, especially the very near
future, and especially if the quantity being considered is not much influenced by other trends that are
occuring elsewhere in the system. Of course, none of the five factors we are examining here is independent.
Each interacts constantly with all the others. We have already mentioned some of these interactions.
Population cannot grow without food, food production is increased by growth of capital, more capital
requires more resources, discarded resources become pollution, pollution interferes with the growth of both
population and food.

Furthermore, over long time periods each of these factors also feeds back to influence itself.

In this first simple world model, we are interested only in the broad behavior modes of the population-capital
system. By behavior modes we mean the tendencies of the variables in the system (population or pollution,
for example) to change as time progresses.

A major purpose in constructing the world model has been to determine which, if any, of these behavior
modes will be most characteristic of the world system as it reaches the limits to growth. This process of
determining behavior modes is "prediction" only in the most limited sense of the word.

Because we are interested at this point only in broad behavior modes, this first world model needs not be
extremely detailed. We thus consider only one general population, a population that statistically reflects the
average characteristics of the global population. We include only one class of pollutants--the long-lived,
globally distributed family of pollutants, such as lead, mercury, asbestos, and stable pesticides and
radioisotopes--whose dynamic behavior in the ecosystem we are beginning to understand. We plot one
generalized resource that represents the combined reserves of all nonrenewable resourCes, although we
know that each separate resource will follow the general dynamic pattern at its own specific level and rate.

This high level of aggregation is necessary at this point to keep the model understandable. At the same time
it limits the information we can expect to gain from the model.

Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In
terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful.

On the other hand it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human
society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socio-economic systems when the limits are reached.

All levels in the model (population, capital, pollution, etc.) begin with 1900 values. From 1900 to 1970 the
variables agree generally with their historical value to the extent that we know them. Population rises from
1.6 billion in 1900 to 3.5 billion in 1970. Although the birth rate declines gradually, the death rate falls more
quickly, especially after 1940, and the rate of population growth increases. Industrial output, food and
services per capita increase exponentially. The resource base in 1970 is still about 95 percent of its 1900
value, but it declines dramatically thereafter, as population and industrial output continue to grow.

The behavior mode of the system is that of overshoot and collapse. In this run the collapse occurs because
of nonrenewable resource depletion. The industrial capital stock grows to a level that requires an enormous
input of resources. In the very process of that growth it depletes a large fraction of the resource reserves
available. As resource prices rise and mines are depleted, more and more capital must be used for obtaining
resources, leaving less to be invested for future growth. Finally investment cannot keep up with
depreciation, and the industrial base collapses, taking with it the service and agricultural systems, which
have become dependent on industrial inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides, hospital laboratories, computers,
and especially energy for mechanization). For a short time the situation is especially serious because
population, with the delays inherent in the age structure and the process of social adjustment, keeps rising.
Population finally decreases when the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services. The
exact timing of these events is not meaningful, given the great aggregation and many uncertainties in the
model. It is significant, however, that growth is stopped well before the year 2100. We have tried in every
doubtful case to make the most optimistic estimate of unknown quantities, and we have also ignored
discontinuous events such as wars or epidemics, which might act to bring an end to growth even sooner
than our model would indicate. In other words, the model is biased to allow growth to continue longer than
it probably can continue in the real world. We can thus say with some confidence that, under the
assumption of no major change in the present system, population and industrial growth will certainly stop
within th next century, at the latest.

To test the model assumption about available resources, we doubled the resource reserves in 1900, keeping
all other assumptions identical to those in the standard run. Now industrialization can reach a higher level
since resources are not so quickly depleted. The larger industrial plant releases pollution at such a rate,
however, that the environmental pollution absorption mechanisms become saturated. Pollution rises very
rapidly, causing an immediate increase in the death rate and a decline in food production. At the end of the
run resources are severely depleted in spite of the doubled amount initially available.

Is the future of the world system bound to be growth and then collapse into a dismal, depleted existence?
Only if we make the initial assumption that our present way of doing things will not change. We have ample
evidence of mankind's ingenuity and social flexibility. There are, of course, many likely changes in the
system, some of which are already taking place. The Green Revolution is raising agricultural yields in non
industrialized countries. Knowledge about modern methods of birth control is spreading rapidly.

Although the history of human effort contains numerous incidents of mankind's failure to live within
physical limits, it is success in overcoming limits that forms the cultural tradition of many dominant people
in today's world. Over the past three hundred years, mankind has compiled an impressive record of pushing
back the apparent limits to population and economic growth by a series of spectacular technological
advances. Since the recent history of a large part of human society has been so continuously successful, it
is quite natural that many people expect technological breakthrough to go on raising physical ceilings
indefinitely.

Will new technologies alter the tendency of the world system to grow and collapse?

Let us assume, however, that the technological optimists are correct and that nuclear energy will solve the
resource problems of the world.

Let us also assume a reduction in pollution generation all sources by a factor of four, starting in 1975.

Let us also assume that the normal yield per hectare of all the world's land can be further increased by a
factor of two.Besides we assume perfect birth control, practiced voluntarily, starting in 1975.

All this means we are utilizing a technological policy in every sector of the world model to circumvent in
some way the various limits to growth. The model system is producing nuclear power, recycling resources,
and mining the most remote reserves; withholding as many pollutants as possible; pushing yields from the
land to undreamed-of heights; and producing only children who are actively wanted by their parents. The
result is still an end to growth before the year 2100.

Because of three siumultaneous crises. Overuse of land leads to erosion, and food production drops.
Resources are severly depleted by a prosperous world population (but not as prosperous as the present US
population). Pollution rises, drops, and then rises again dramatically, causing a further decrease in food
production and a sudden rise in the death rate. The application of technological solutions alone has
prolonged the period of population and industrial growth, but it has not removed the ultimate limits to that
growth.

Given the many approximations and limitations of the world model, there is no point in dwelling glumly on
the series of catastrophes it tends to generate. We shall emphasize just one more time that none of these
computer outputs is a prediction. We would not expect the real world to behave like the world model in any
of the graphs we have shown, especially in the collapse modes. The model contains dynamic statements
about only the physical aspects of man's activities. It assumes that social variables--income distribution,
attitudes about family size, choices among goods, services, and food--will continue to follow the same
patterns they have followed throughout the world in recent history. These patterns, and the human value
they represent, were all established in the growth phase of our civilization. They would certainly be greatly
revised as population and income began to decrease. Since we find it difficult to imagine what new forms of
human societal behavior might emerge and how quickly they would emerge under collapse conditions, we
have not attempted to model such social changes. What validity our model has holds up only to the point in
each output graph at which growth comes to an end and collapse begins.

The unspoken assumption behind all of the model runs we have presented in this chapter is that population
and capital growth should be allowed to continue until they reach some "natural" limit. This assumption also
appears to be a basic part of the human value system currently operational in the real world. Given that first
assumption, that population and capital growth should not be deliberately limited but should be left to "seek
their own levels", we have not been able to find a set of policies that avoids the collapse mode of behavior.

The hopes of the technological optimists center on the ability of technology to remove or extend the limits to
growth of population and capital. We have shown that in the world model the application of technology to
apparent problems of resource depletion or pollution or food shortage has no impact on the essential
problem, which is exponential growth in a finite and complex system. Our attempts to use even the most
optimistic estimates of the benefits of technology in the model did not prevent the ultimate decline of
population and industry, and in fact did not in any case postpone the collapse beyond the year 2100.

Unfortunately the model does not indicate, at this stage, the social side-effects of new technologies. These
effects are often the most important in terms of the influence of a technology on people's lives.

Social side-effects must be anticipated and forestalled before the large-scale introduction of a new
technology.

DECLARATION of The Club of Rome - Brussels, April 25, 1996 —The Executive Committee:, Wed Apr 19 15:06