Next Great Depression? MIT researchers predict ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030
A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace.
Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says "the world is on track for disaster" and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, "The Limits to Growth."
Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages.
Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.
However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint.
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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)I wonder if they took into account the bubbles that Wall Street keeps creating to pump more money out of the pockets of the peasants and into their own accounts. I suspect the next time a bubble blows up in their face it just might take the whole world economy with it.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
villager
(26,001 posts)Fixed now!
Beartracks
(12,797 posts)I don't see why that should not be possible. Mankind shouldn't measure it's economic growth in units of resource destruction, but in units of resource conservation.
Just thinkin' out loud.
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ArcticFox
(1,249 posts)Using scare tactics to push their green agenda.
Sarcasm
Kablooie
(18,608 posts)It's closer to the end of modern life.
The world will collapse into something more like feudal Europe or possibly Cro-Magnon societies.
On a happier note: The conservatives will be dancing with joy as they get exactly what they've been yearning for all these years.
marmar
(77,053 posts)nt
modrepub
(3,491 posts)that's my retirement date...