"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Limits to Growth Kicking In?

In another The Oil Drum production, Ugo Bardi makes the case that yes, the condition of the world today is the Club of Rome prediction "verifying" as metorologists would say, or "coming true" as they say in the fable business.
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.

6 comments:

Marion Delgado said...

Michael, the COMMENTS over at that thread are more depressing than anything I've seen anywhere else in many, many years.

Anonymous said...

economists are convincing people of ridiculous theses in moral and political philosophy that their research doesn't even support

That sounds like M. Tobis bait...

From The Ethical Werewolf via deLong.

A possible way to force de Long to address growth assumptions? I've already taken a swing and missed.

Anonymous said...

Also, the cover story for Scientific American is a six pager on Population and Sustainability

Michael Tobis said...

It's an interesting idea.

Why are we going after DeLong and not Krugman, though?

Anonymous said...

Why are we going after DeLong and not Krugman, though?

I doubt we'll be able to get Krugman's attention. Not a knock against de Long, but there aren't as many people on his blog trying to get his attention as their are on Krugman's.

Anonymous said...

DeLong.

Damn. That wasn't a knock against you either if you're reading this, Brad!