Fifty two years ago, on this day, November 24th, 1971, a Club of Rome researcher is hosted by the American Embassy in London…
At a second meeting in November 1971, Forrester’s lead researcher, Meadows, was flown in to explain the model at an event hosted by the American Embassy.119 https://ucldigitalpress.co.uk/v2-interactive/Book/Article/61/86/4766/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Club of Rome had hired some people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do a big computer modelling study, based on Jay Forester’s work which was state of the art at the time, but had obvious shortcomings. There had been a leak of an early draft in the Observer in June, and there was a lot of interest in what the Limits to Growth people were going to say. And so Dennis Meadows, who was one of the research team, was brought over to the United States Embassy in London and gave a briefing on this day.
What we learn is that The Limits to Growth report in early 1972 was, as we would now say, “well-trailed.” People were talking about all of these issues. And the question of what would happen if we just kept trying to grow the economy 50 or 60 years hence, well here we are and we know.
What happened next, we kept trying to grow the economy, we ignored the Limits to Growth. People who ought to have known better sneered at it as “Malthus with a computer” and there have been various studies showing that the Limits to Growth people are kind of tracking quite well with reality, which is more than you can say of all the lovely models of economics.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
November 24, 1977 – Canberra Times reports “all coal” plan would “flood US cities”
November 24, 2009 – the Climate War in Australia goes kinetic…