Are there Really Limits

to Population
Growth?
The Study
The Limits to Growth was released more than 40
years ago at a conference at the Smithsonion
Institution. The study was spearheaded by a model
designed by researchers at MIT to investigate five
major ongoing global trends:

 Accelerating industrial development

 Rapid population growth
 Widespread malnutrition
 Depletion of nonrenewable resources
 A deteriorating environment
Population
Regarding population, the limits to growth
researchers came to the following conclusions
based on their model:

 “Unless there is a sharp rise in mortality, which

mankind will strive mightily to avoid, we can look
forward to a world population of around 7 billion
persons in 30 more years.”

 “…in 60 years there would be four people in the

world for everyone living today.” This would mean
an increase in world population from 3.8 billion in
1972 to about 15 billion by the year 2030.
 To help this prediction to come to past the average
global life expectancy actually rose from 60 years to
70 years.

 However the researchers could not predict that the

global fertility rate i.e. the average number of
children a woman has throughout her lifetime, would
drop from about 6 per woman to less than 2.8. This
rate still continues to drop.

 The latest high fertility population projection from the

UN actually predicts that the world population will be
about 9 billion persons, well short of the 15 billion
predicted by the limits to growth researchers.

 This is just one of the many instances in which the

model used by the researchers failed to account for
changes in human behaviour.
Food Supplies
Arable land and the amount of food that
could be yielded from said land was
considered to be one of the ultimate limits
to growth in the researcher’s model.
Model Prediction

 As long as industrial production continued to rise in the 21st

century then the yield from each hectare of land would
also rise up to a maximum of seven times the average yield
in the year 1900.

Actual

 Since 1900, American corn farmers have already boosted

yield nearly seven-fold from 26 bushels per acre to 166
bushels per acre. (This is well before the “rise of industrial
production in the 21st century.”)

 Also, as a 2010 article in Philosophical Transactions of the

Royal Society B argues: based on the technology we now
have available we can effectively close the gap in yields
between third and first world farmers. The article concluded
that, “There is a good prospect that crop production will
increase by approximately 50 percent or more by 2050
without extra land.”
Model Prediction

 The researchers noted if crop yields didn’t improve then

the amount of land cultivated would increase from 1.4
billion hectares of land in 1972 to 3 billion hectares by 2000,
so as to feed the projected world population of 7 billion

Actual

 Crop yields doubled; the land devoted to the production

of crops increased marginally from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion
hectares from 1961, according to the U.N.’s Food and
Agricultural Organization.

The amount of food available continues to be a non-issue.

The latest figures from the United Nations show that as world
population increased by just over 10 percent between 2000
and 2009, global food production rose by 21 percent.
Nonrenewable resources
The researchers strongly believed that in about 100
years, the majority of nonrenewable resources would
be extremely expensive as a result of them being
almost depleted. To validate this argument they
pointed at the spike in prices mercury and lead had
experienced over the last few decades:

 The price of mercury had increased 500 percent in

the last 20 years

 The price of lead was up 300 percent over the

past 30 years
Additionally the researchers used the model to
calculate how fast the earth’s more important
nonrenewable resources would be depleted at an
exponential consumption rate. These predictions were
made 40 years ago.

Model predictions
 known world copper reserves would be entirely
depleted in 36 years

 Lead in 26 years mercury in 13 years, natural gas in 38

years

 Petroleum in 31 years, silver in 16 years, tin in 17 years

 Tungsten in 40 years, and zinc in 23 years

 Additionally, the researchers estimated known global

oil reserves at 455 billion barrels in the year 1972
Actual
 Based on current consumption rates, the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) in its 2012 mineral summaries report
estimates that: The world has 130 years of bauxite
reserves, which are used to produce aluminum

 Known copper reserves will last 43 years

 Known lead reserves will last 18 years (however identified

lead resources equal 1.5 billion tons which would mean
a supply lasting more than 300,000 years)

 Mercury reserves are enough to another 48 years

(However due to it being used less and less, it is likely to
last another century or more)

 Oil reserves sit at 1,687.9 billion barrels, which is enough

oil to last the world 53.3 years
 It is also very likely that there are much more
reserves than has already been discovered.
Until markets signal that more is needed,
miners and technologists do not usually
develop new production techniques or seek
out new reserves
Environment
The state of the environment, according to
most of the runs conducted by the
researcher’s model, appears to be the
ultimate x-factor in determining whether
humanity is doomed or not. It directly
increases human death rates and also has
a negative impact food production.
However though pollution continues to rise globally due to
industrial and global production, it does not do so at an
exponential rate as is assumed by the model. This is
especially not the case in developed countries.

In fact:

 Since 1970, the U.S. economy has grown by 200 percent,

yet the levels of air pollutants, as regulated by the
federal government, have fallen by nearly 60 percent.

 In both the U.S. and the European Union sulfur dioxide

emissions have dropped by nearly 70 percent since
1990.

 Sulphur dioxide levels from China peaked in 2006, and

since have begun to decline.

Instead of an exponential increase in industrial pollution

we have actually seen major decreases.
Fertilizer use was a major concern in the
1970’s. From world war two to then, its
consumption had increased five-fold to 50
million tons. The analysts noted that this
increase was an exponential one with an
average doubling time of about ten years.

 Using this logic, it would be expected

that by today global consumption would
sit at about 400 million tons.

 However actual fertilizer use is currently

150 million tons
Are we Eventually doomed
anyway?
 “Thereare no limits to growth and growth will
not of necessity destroy the
environment. Human beings will not stop trying
to improve their material condition. They will
not "de-develop" and give up hot water, air-
conditioning, private transportation, flying or
shopping.” – Tsvi Bisk
We shall survive!!
Different measures can be taken:

 Vertical farming – This would enable land area the

size of Pennsylvania to feed 12 billion people.
Singapore actually aims to produce 80% of its food
by vertical farming within the next several decades.

 Urbanization - Larger, denser cities are cleaner and

more energy efficient than smaller cities, suburbs,
and even small towns. If the entire country was a
dense as New York the USA would be a net CO2 sink
even with today's technology.

 Material Science/ Technological advancements -

Carbon nanotubes are 300 times stronger than steel
per gram, more efficient than copper in conducting
electricity and a more efficient photovoltaic material
than silicon.