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MIT Predicted Society Will Collapse in 2040. Research Shows We're on Schedule

215 points by ako 5y ago

reustle 5y ago
URL redirects to https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicat...
reedjosh 5y ago
https://www.dltk-teach.com/fairy-tales/chicken-little/story.htm https://www.dltk-teach.com/fairy-tales/chicken-little/story....
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Societal collapse is not as unprecedented and deadly as the sky falling in. It's something that's happened before, many times: ever heard of “the fall of Rome”? And where is Rome now? A thriving city… within a completely different society to the one it had before.
  - david927 5y ago
    This is talking about global resources. As resources dwindle they will get exponentially more expensive and become available only to a few. This isn't about a temporary societal collapse, and you would be a fool to ignore it.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      I'm not ignoring it anyway. I do think that monocropping and the like do pose a potential for a collapse. That said systems thinking and computer models have led to predictions of collapse only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics. Humans are highly adaptable and the power of the economic invisible hand is enormous. I for example will be growing more and more of my own food as I see the quality of food dwindle while the cost rise. Solar is only becoming cheaper. The future can be a great place, but sure we should think about what kind of future we may be facing if we don't make preparations or let someone else guide us there.
      - Layke1123 5y ago
        Ha ha I love this. On one hand, you criticize systems thinkers and computer models as only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics even though we see climate change devastation first hand, and on the other, you invoke the power of the "invisible hand". The irony.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      Resources aren't dwindling. You could fit the entire population of Earth in a space the size of Texas with the equivalent population density of NYC. To support all of those people, the Earth has more than enough nuclear fuel in the oceans for thousands of years. Water is not a problem either when you have oceans and unlimited amount of energy, and with water and limitless energy it's not that hard to grow enough food to feed everyone (Hydroponics, gene editing, artificial meat, etc). Perhaps in a thousand years we will run into some sort of natural limit, but by then I highly doubt humans will be a single planet species.
      - david927 5y ago
        You're uninformed. Resources are unequivocally dwindling. No question about it. It doesn't matter that there are only seven billion humans. We're consuming resources and we're doing so incredibly quickly. How much oil was in the ground 100 years ago versus today? You'll counter that we'll switch to solar. I agree. But do you know how long and costly such a switch will be? Water is not a problem because we have seawater? Do you know the struggles with desalination and how expensive it is? The main take away here isn't just that resources are dwindling. You need to understand that 100 years ago, you could just stick a single pipe in the ground and get massive amounts of oil. The EROI for oil was over 1200. It basically came free. In 1950 it was 60. Now it's around 1.6. Once it drops below one, it makes no sense to extract it. Whether or not oil "still exists" is moot. And this is the big point: all the cheap seats are taken. All the easy resources have been used and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for what's remaining. Even renewable resources have been swept clean. Less than 10% of big fish are left in the ocean. Yes, we can switch to fish farming but it will take a while, be much more expensive and produce a lot less fish. Hydroponics? Really? Do you know how expensive that would be? If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, you would just say, "It's fine! I'll just mine some iron and make a ship! And if I get thirsty I'm surrounded by ocean water!" It's simply not that easy. You don't seem concerned. It's probably because you're wealthy. This is a threat to the poorest of those seven billion, and it's a big threat. Don't be such a Pollyanna when it's about their lives.
  - Kluny 5y ago
    You don't have to look back that far. 15 years ago, South Africa was a wealthy and growing country. This week, they have this going on: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-africa-looting-1.6102001 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-africa-looting-1.6102001 It's in response to the imprisonment of the former president, who was jailed for failing to appear in court for crimes that he definitely did commit. The looters and arsonists are mad that he's being held accountable.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      The looters are mad because he’s a prince in a major tribe in South Africa. They are also mad because despite almost three decades of democracy, they are still dirt poor
    - eloff 5y ago
      South Africa was doomed by apartheid. Democracy doesn't function if you have an uneducated populace. They were uneducated because of apartheid policies. It will take many generations for that stain to be undone. Leaving the policy in place was untenable for humanitarian and practical reasons. Simply repealing it and giving the vote to everyone was also untenable. It was a lose lose situation and the only good solution was and remains to leave while it's still possible. South Africa is an extreme case of how investment in education (severe underinvestment in this case) is strongly correlated with the future prospects of a nation.
      - FredPret 5y ago
        But it’s not just down to the level of investment. SA spends quite a lot on education. Granted, it doesn’t get much value for the money, but there’s something else wrong
        eloff 5y ago
        Its not what it spends now specifically that is haunting it, it's the decades where it didn't educate the majority of its citizens. It's an effect that lags multiple generations.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- counternotions 5y ago
  What is up with what appears to be the growing audience of “doom porn” enthusiasts?
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    That audience has always been there. In chaotic times doomsday scenarios seem reasonable. In peaceful times they seem exciting.
    - finiteseries 5y ago
      Always remember the doers, builders, fixers, and makers with the audacity to solve those very same problems have, and always will be there too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-and-the-prophet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-and-...
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > What is up with what appears to be the growing audience of “doom porn” enthusiasts? It's a convenient excuse for complacency. If everything is going to shit in 2040, why bother acting now to better yourself, your community, your country or the world? Also, drama.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  Without any context it’s hard to discern your point. Who is Chicken Little in this scenario?
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Yeah, I knew this was a cheap post. From my post below though... systems thinking and computer models have led to predictions of collapse only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics. Humans are highly adaptable and the power of the economic invisible hand is enormous. I for example will be growing more and more of my own food as I see the quality of food dwindle while the costs rise. Solar is only becoming cheaper. The future can be a great place, but sure we should think about what kind of future we may be facing if we don't make preparations or let someone else guide us there.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      So far, the power of the invisible hand has brought not much more besides suffering for the average person.
      - reedjosh 5y ago
        The average person in the US lives better than a king did throughout most of history. You're free to go live in the wilderness if you think modernity has only brought about suffering, but capitalism brought you that device you typed this message on.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        I agree that the average person today lives like a king, but I disagree that capitalism is what brought it about. IMO, the capitalism = progress relationship is coincidental, not causal. The march of science and technology would have continued, capitalism or no capitalism. Even the Soviets, for all the problems and violence caused by their unfree economic system, managed to make tech and scientific progress work, albeit slower. And yes, capitalism brought me the smartphone that I'm typing on today: with all the harmful, attention-grabbing and addictive features. That's why I'm trying to quit smartphones altogether.
kmtrowbr 5y ago
Note: the graphs seem to be mislabeled / misordered. The initials in the upper left hand corner are accurate: CT: Comprehensive Technology, SW: Stabilized World, BAU2: Business As Usual.
danielodievich 5y ago
I don't know what ad keywords are hooked up to this, but when opening it on mobile it the ads I get in the middle are for planning my cremation, with happy and distinguished looking gray haired people congregated around the rose bushes and tasteful urns. Very appropriate to the subject.
gshubert17 5y ago
The KPMG research about the Limits to Growth scenarios is at https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html It is titled "Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data".
AlexanderDhoore 5y ago
Exponential growth on a finite planet. What could go wrong.
- pope_meat 5y ago
  Don't worry, a future technology will fix everything. Now get out there and buy a new car, buddy.
- david927 5y ago
  Technology has blessed us. We've come up with "super straws" to extract oil incredibly efficiently giving us cheap oil, we've devised huge barges which act essentially as vacuum cleaners for fish in the ocean giving us incredibly cheap fish. The problem is that this skews the curve that would normally slowly taper supply down, which would increase prices and lower demand. Now, instead, because of this blessed technology, we'll march quickly on full demand to the end and have nothing left. We'll empty the oceans of all the cheap fish and won't know until it's all gone.
- gruez 5y ago
  But it's not going to continue forever. AFAIK we're supposed to level out in 2100.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    60 years after the collapse of society, if the date in the heading is correct.
- 99_00 5y ago
  Why would growth continue to be exponential? >The 2019 forecast from the United Nation's Population Division (made before the COVID-19 pandemic) shows that world population growth peaked at 2.1% per year in 1968, has since dropped to 1.1%, and could drop even further to 0.1% by 2100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
  - 5y ago
z5h 5y ago
All the experts have been talking about a housing market collapse in Toronto for the past 15+ years. It’s been imminent and inevitable year after year … after year. Well, I guess these complex systems are hard to predict. But OK, let’s suppose this true. What are the best/recent books that discuss this?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Everyone in the Toronto analysis ignores dual incomes. Yeah, the median income isn't that great. But for those who are in couples? Working backwords from after tax income, it is about 120K-140K a year median. https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/mbf4z3/how_much_money_did_canadians_earn_in_2019_combien/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/mbf4...
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    When I've seen measures of median income it's usually median family income.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Working backwords from after tax income, it is about 120K-140K a year median. But your source says that the median family (aka household, so it factors in both earners) income for non-seniors is only $93k, and with kids it's only $105k? Where are you getting $120k-140k from? Households where both earners are high income professionals?
    - swashboon 5y ago
      yep
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      That is the after tax income. I am converting it to the gross income that people usually use for comparing salaries.
      - 5y ago
PaulHoule 5y ago
We made the big mistake of not going whole hog at developing a high-temperature nuclear reactor circa 2000 or so.
xbpx 5y ago
For those interested in learning more about the agrowth perspective, and how investment in public commons can be a convincing solution I highly recommend Jason Hickel's work, specifically his book "Less is More". If you want the deep dive treatment I've just finished Thomas Piketty's "Capital and Ideology" and was very impressed with the thorough historical treatment. https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822
- heyn05tradamu5 5y ago
  Hickel gets basic facts wrong and distorts the views of his critics. The thread below walks through some of the basic errors he makes. https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809
  - xbpx 5y ago
    Actually it's quite easy to poke holes in that rebuttal provided by the linked article in Max's tweet. Basically there is a lot hidden by looking at average income per person per country when inequality has risen dramatically everywhere. The 2nd link I posted delves into this deeply and I suggest reading that instead of short form hit pieces and tweets. (That applies to Jason and Max, they're both guilty of window dressing)
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > investment in public commons Investment in commons is something rich societies do. If we're predicated on a collapse hypothesis, the rich will focus on survival and power. That returns us to a zero-growth, zero-sum environment, which almost linearly leads to militarization. (If I have a choice between investing in research or buying munitions, and I believe society is about to collapse, I do the latter.) Between an army and a law defining XYZ as a common good, the army wins.
tunesmith 5y ago
I got into the World3 model and its offshoots a few years back... somewhere online I found a JS implementation of the model that let you fiddle with the various inputs that the model was sensitive to. I don't remember the details, but I quickly discovered that one of inputs was extremely sensitive and would impact the model dramatically, and in the opposite direction that you would expect. I think it was something along the line of business growth - if you increased business growth just a little bit, the worst projections of the model disappeared.
notjes 5y ago
Club of Rome hiring people to preach The Apocalypse 7.0, again and again and again.
giantg2 5y ago
"Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources." I'm sorry, but - No shit! Of course there are growth and population limits, and we are close to them. Everyone talks about global warming, but few talk about population and consumption as the main driver for that. We like the narrative that we have the technology to face climate issues and future resource scarcity because it means we're not doomed. We will either need unpalatable or forced lifestyle/societal changes or we will inevitably face these unwanted changes when consumption outpaces resources. Oh and China is now suggesting 3 kids per couple will be to tolerated...
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Over population is not an issue for two reasons. 1 - Birth rates are falling. We’re getting pretty damned close to the peak of human population. There are some very easy steps we can do to expedite this, such as helping reduce infant mortality rate among the global poor, a move that is known to reduce fertility rates too. 2 - Consumption is wildly uneven among the world’s population. Focusing on population implies that those areas with high fertility rates are the issue, when in fact the primary limiting factor is and will remain the high consumption rate of the world’s richest nations.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Population momentum means population will peak at 11.2 billion people near the end of the century [1] before it declines. Total fertility rate drop isn't happening fast enough (need to get closer to 1 vs 2.1 replacement rate), and we've already locked in the expansion to 11.2 billion. 3 billion people can't afford to get enough nutrition [2]. That number will increase before it decreases. Consider we're already on the path to exceed our carbon budget [3], and billions of people are trying to climb out of poverty (which requires fossil fuels, resources, and food production, which we are already managing....poorly and unsustainably). Many countries still offer funds to people to have children and have pro-natalist policies (to goose economic policy and pay for elderly entitlements and stave off the economic contraction). We're not just headed off the cliff; we're pushing our foot on the gas. TLDR Those who consume the most will need to consume less, and even then there is likely not enough to go around for first world standards for all. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth [2] https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability [3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-...
99_00 5y ago
I predict that we will continue to see catastrophic prognostications in the future.
astroalex 5y ago
At the time of this comment, the charts in this article are mixed up. The "Business as usual", "Comprehensive technology" and "stabilized world" charts have incorrect captions.
DevKoala 5y ago
It’s like 2012 except for our civilization. /s
karmasimida 5y ago
I won't buy any prediction 5 years into future, let alone 20 years
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I can accurately predict that in 20 years 240 months will pass in Africa.
  - karmasimida 5y ago
    LoL, maybe I should specify. Any predictions aim to provide nontrivial insights
  - gorjusborg 5y ago
    Nice try, Nostradamus!
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    Just wait until a leap second or time zone change ruins your prediction
panax 5y ago
This reminds me of this report from 2002: https://www.wwf.fr/sites/default/files/doc-2018-10/lpr_living_planet_report_2002.pdf https://www.wwf.fr/sites/default/files/doc-2018-10/lpr_livin... "the world’s ecological footprint will continue to grow between 2000 and 2050 from a level 20 per cent above the Earth’s biological capacity to a level between 80 and 120 percent above it (Figure 30). In these scenarios, 9 billion people in 2050 would require between 1.8 and 2.2 Earth-sized planets in order to sustain their consumption of crops, meat, fish, and wood, and to hold CO2 levels constant in the atmosphere.... Two World3 scenarios were chosen: a standard scenario, which assumes no policy changes over the next 50 years; and an accelerated technology scenario, which assumes significant improvements in resource efficiency. In the standard scenario, the HEF grows and peaks around 2040 at about 150 per cent above the Earth’s biological capacity, while the HWI climbs to around 20 per cent above the 2000 level in 2030 but then falls away rapidly, as the Earth’s productive ecosystems are no longer able to sustain high levels of human consumption. In the accelerated technology scenario the HEF reaches a maximum of 60 per cent above biological capacity in 2020 and then declines back to the 2000 level by 2050, as more resource-efficient technologies reduce the footprint, while the HWI climbs and remains at almost 20 per cent above 2000 levels"
gorjusborg 5y ago
Don't worry, I have a plan. We just need to shorten the collapse. We'll do this by preserving the knowledge of our current society. We'll do that by archiving all human knowledge, a task carried out by a hand-picked group of archivists. We'll also need a second group, whose task it too important to make widely known. They'll be sent to the other side of the planet, and will work on their (extremely instrumental) thing. We'll shorten the collapse from thousands to tens of years. Who's with me?
- E39M5S62 5y ago
  I'm in! - The Mule
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  I too think that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a productive way to ~~fuck people over~~ shorten the collapse.
- cno-cyclist 5y ago
  Remember to take some nuclear engineers with you, they'd make some excellent priests...
- monocasa 5y ago
  Viral marketing for The Foundation is kicking into high gear already I see (I kid, I kid).
  - jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
    Greenpeace originally was based on The Foundation from Foundation.
- fumar 5y ago
  Sounds like the foundation of something big. I am in.
- 5y ago
parf02 5y ago
I wonder how the younger generation is supposed to plan for the future? Even myself as a 30 year old, I'm finding it very difficult to plan my financial future considering traditional personal finance knowledge can become irrelevant within my working life-time. Anyone have resources to guide my financial decisions taking into consideration these dooms-day scenarios? Index-fund investing seems bound to failure with such scenarios.
- lolsal 5y ago
  I'm interested in this also. As a 30-something I have no idea what to invest in for "retirement" or how to plan for the next 30 years. edit: I should say I lack faith in traditional retirement advice/planning, not that I have no idea how to do it.
  - humbleMouse 5y ago
    Buy land with water availability and growable soil, build small cheap place to live, try to pay it off asap. That’s all you can do to prep
    - lolsal 5y ago
      I think you're over-simplifying - land with water access today doesn't mean anything in ten years with continued climate change. Unless you have water rights (and even if you do), that water won't necessarily be present (or potable) in ten years, and your water rights likely won't matter either.
      - humbleMouse 5y ago
        It’s not about water rights specifically. I’d argue that being by the Great Lakes or in one of the midwest river basins is a sure bet of having drinkable well water in 10 years
  - wil421 5y ago
    Max out 401k, IRA if eligible, mutual funds for the rest, live below you means. Don’t finance more than 30% of your income (after taxes!) on house, cars, or boats. Live in or plan to move to a lower cost location during retirement. Don’t be too stingy and enjoy life!
DonnyV 5y ago
Is it me or is 2040 humanity's inflection point? Around that time general A.I. should be here. Climate change is wrecking havoc, most jobs will be automated, mid point of total insect collapse, severe water shortage will affect the entire planet, etc Just in time for my retirement. The last great kick in the nutz for GenX. Should I be buying a plot of land in northern Canada and prepping?
- efficax 5y ago
  Very doubtful that there will ever be general AI and significantly more doubtful that it is only 19 years away
  - lolsal 5y ago
    I imagine progress in AI is hockey-stick shaped, not linear. We could have 18 years of stagnant progress and then be overwhelmed in year 19. It seems impossible to predict.
    - DonnyV 5y ago
      Yeah I think thats exactly whats going to happen. I've been watching old episodes of Star Trek Voyager and laughing to myself the model they used for computers then. Still thinking that a piece of digital data had to be put on a pad and given to someone. I don't think people realize how much in the future we live in right now with tech. A.I. now will train future A.I. and it will get faster and faster.
  - thysultan 5y ago
    It's entirely possible if we can move to general all-photonic computing in the next 5 years.
- f6v 5y ago
  > Around that time general A.I. should be here. We'll be lucky if at least self-driving cars are on the roads in 19 years.
- OJFord 5y ago
yongjik 5y ago
The graphs are so unspecific that it would fit in a fanfiction for Sid Meier's Civilization. "Resources" and "Pollution"? What resources and what pollution?
- kosievdmerwe 5y ago
  Also how would pollution still be growing exponentially if population and industrial production dropped off substantially?
imglorp 5y ago
Talking about resources needs to specifically call out fresh water management. It's not exactly a shortage but it's more essential than oil. When upstream dams a river, does downstream shrug and walk away? What about collecting rainfall on your own property? Ecology? Agriculture? Industry (hello Nestle)? Droughts affect power: Hoover dam is below capacity because Lake Meade is about 100 feet low and falling, plus Oroville dam is expected to shut down power this summer. Does this mean spinning up more carbon generators to fill in the hydro gaps? Desalination and pumping both take power. So many issues.
wil421 5y ago
> The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue. Not to worry guys! KPMG is on the case and can help your company do a risk assessment to prepare for collapse. Based on their finding they will implement a solution for you! /sarcasm
cjsplat 5y ago
I assume that January 19, 2038 is within the rounding error on that? (End of 32-bit UNIX time for the people who don't have this on their calendar already).
AceJohnny2 5y ago
In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy of science-fiction books, one of my favorite ideas was of "full-planet" (?) business models. It posited that most business models were based on growth: sell more widgets to the population. Build more and more things. But the world markets are saturated, so there emerged a new approach of full-market business models, for example focused on repair, maintenance, and recycling. (this was a key conflict in the book, with the old actors trying to expand into Mars, which wanted none of it, and Mars finding new allies in the proponents of sustainable/renewable business)
- TOGoS 5y ago
  The usual way to address this is to have wars. Destroy lots of stuff and now you can make big loans for the rebuilding. This is why the economy boomed for a while after WWII.
  - AceJohnny2 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
digitcatphd 5y ago
Identifying a specific time frame significantly de-legitimizes this study, but its broad case - excluding any change of technology or societal behavioral shifts - is entirely valid. Merely global warming and AI reducing jobs and resources alone in the next 50 years is likely sufficient to cause severe changes to 'society' in its current form. Societies and species follow periods of advance and decline in both short and long-term and being in a state of surplus, we fail to recognize this or dismiss it as irrelevant and only impacting our own lifespan.
xyst 5y ago
Lake Mead is receding rapidly. California is in constant drought and wildfire state. O&G continues to destroy the planet with minimal repercussions. Unsustainable deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest. Unprecedented heat waves across the country/world. Increasing plastic pollution. Decreasing biodiversity. It’s only a matter of time until we have resource constraints (water, energy, clean air) and countries start wars over these scarce resources. Sounds about right. I’ll see you all in hell soon!
ineedasername 5y ago
Nope, per the article: collapse “does not mean that humanity will cease to exist,” but rather that “economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline, which will hurt food production and standards of living Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse, if the analysis is even accurate. It seems like the best selling book that put this out in the 70's traded on fear mongering, and now this article is just repeating it.
- regularfry 5y ago
  It depends how much standard of living is affected, and what nonlinear effects might go along with that. "Hurt food production", in the BAU2 scenario, means mass starvation as the food supply shrinks from feeding 7 billion to feeding less than 2 billion. Humanity hasn't seen that sort of contraction before. It is unlikely to be pretty.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  "Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse", if it doesn't cause War. Quite impossible that Countries won't fight each other to see who falls slower than the other.
- aylmao 5y ago
  > Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse, if the analysis is even accurate. This depends on the base standard we're talking about. If someone's standard goes from not having to think about energy consumption, to not being able to afford running the dishwasher or dryer, then sure, no big deal. If someone's standard goes from getting by to starving, they are going to fight. I imagine there's a lot of places around the world where a sharp decline in standard of living could lead to civil war.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Ah, excellent point. This is why I come to HN, because discussion. Will reveal when I need to consider something with more nuance and dig deeper into topics. It would definitely depend on how evenly spread the decline is. 10% (or whatever) evenly spread out would be bad, because a developed country can tighten its belt and not buy new things as much and focus on less waste, change eating habits to be a little more based on most productive crops instead if taste preference, etc. 10% for a a less developed country would, in terms of the relative utility of money, mean a lot more loss. And that's hoping they didn't decline more than a developed country. (By relative utility of money I mean that the more money a person has, the less that a single unit if money impacts you. $10k increase for a person who makes $35k is a noticeable step up in quality if life. For someone making $500,000k it changes practically nothing)
Zigurd 5y ago
The LtG projections show a wide variety of outcomes depending on the scenario being modeled. The thing that jumps out from what are otherwise very different graphs is that we are now in a place where there is high sensitivity to inputs: IF population growth stops, IF we transition to renewables, etc. outcomes are much less bad than if we crash through all the guardrails. Conventional economic metrics are like watching the tachometer when the engine is overheating.
briefcomment 5y ago
The Club of Rome is a standard bogeyman in conspiracy circles [1]. They are painted as pushing for significant depopulation, through whatever means necessary. If you consider involuntary depopulation as a form of societal collapse, I wonder how much of this will be a self fulfilling prophecy. [1] http://conspiracywiki.com/new-world-order/club-of-rome/ http://conspiracywiki.com/new-world-order/club-of-rome/
cs702 5y ago
In essence, all these dire forecasts are little more than fancy versions of Malthus's predictions, which assume that natural and other resources cannot be improved/increased or more efficiently used as necessary by human ingenuity to support and promote societal well-being.[a][b] Given how large the universe is, I'd bet there's a good chance that scientists, engineers, and enterprising people will find ways to make all these dire predictions wrong. -- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism [b] See also bmmayer1's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27836077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27836077
- eruleman 5y ago
  The beginning of infinity — knowledge created ex-nihilo.
- minikites 5y ago
  Human ingenuity is irrelevant if there isn't popular support for solving the problem. Look at climate change, there's plenty of evidence for its dire effects and plenty of ways we could be addressing it, but we're doing nothing because enough people believe it's a leftist conspiracy. Human ingenuity will always lose to human selfishness.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Human ingenuity can be applied to adaptation. Growing almonds in the desert beside golf courses in the desert doesn't really make sense, but engineering found a way.
    - revscat 5y ago
      There are limits. If rainfall stops no amount of engineering will make the rivers flow or crops grow. If the ocean acidifies and fish stocks plummet, there is no engineering solution for that. This faith people have in engineering just boggles my mind. Look to Venus. That is where our atmosphere is headed.
    - iiggyy 5y ago
Apofis 5y ago
I think it's hooey. China is doing just fine with 1.2 billion people. The US and Russia are no where close to their density.
boba7 5y ago
I think MIT is a scam and we can't predict the future. Thank you for your attention.
nyc_pizzadev 5y ago
Well, we are currently in the computer age which looks like it will be equal if not bigger than the previous industrial age. I believe when this paper was written, the computer age was in its infancy and the world was post industrial. As long as humans continue to innovate and explore into new areas, new ages will emerge and accelerate us forward. Maybe there will be some kind of physics breakthru which gives us easier access to space or some kind of human breakthru where we can alter our bodies. Who knows. Right, if we do nothing new, things will stagnate and eventually collapse.
ken47 5y ago
Assertions like that made in the title of this article are completely ridiculous. Imagine a person driving a car towards a concrete wall at 100 kph. If they keep driving 100 kph, they hit the wall in 2040. So do we predict that they hit the wall in 2040? NO. Any person in their right mind will hit the breaks, swerve, turn the car, etc. Not to mention, some clever entities may devise a way to destroy the wall or move it further down the road. Many comments here talk about "at the current rate of consumption, XYZ will happen." The current rate will not be constant. As we approach the wall, the wall will push back on us with a force that is inversely proportional to our distance from it. People, stop predicting the future with so much confidence. The smartest people have shown time and time again that they can't even predict trivial things. The balance of probabilities says that they'll be wrong again. Face it: in the grand scheme of things, we're not that smart.
- bobongo 5y ago
  > Any person in their right mind will Hmm..
  - blooalien 5y ago
    Hahahah! You saw that, too, eh? ;) Humanity as a whole is clearly not "in their right mind". :(
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  except the car has multiple steering wheels, one for each passenger. final direction input is a black box convergence function across all of them.
ccamrobertson 5y ago
The Club of Rome, peak oil, etc. are fantastic intellectual touch points to categorize people based on whether they believe in human ingenuity aided by economic incentives or not. The simplistic "resources" shown in the graphs does little to explain the methodology of the research, but seems incredibly questionable. For instance, we certainly passed peak oil production in the U.S. in the early 1970s, but thanks to innovations around tar, shale and deep sea extraction the U.S. surpassed this in 2018. This isn't new; in the 19th century Malthus' ghost was apparent as it was predicted that the earth couldn't feed more than a billion people, but thanks to the Haber–Bosch process we can fix nitrogen for fertilizers and feed nearly 8x that number. Certain resources will be completely extracted, but economic incentives will strongly encourage people to devise substitutes. Given how little of the Earth's mantle human activity has touched and the increasing likelihood that we will have technology solutions to manage externalities like excess C02, I'm super encouraged for our future prospects.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  Yes, these kinds of reports are incredibly biased. I see very little evidence of any "model" in the papers other than extrapolation and number tweaking to produce different scenarios. For sure, pollution, habitat destruction / deforestation, soil depletion, are all problems. But these aren't inevitable problems. They all have technological solutions - which the report dismisses as futile for some reason...
- aylmao 5y ago
  > For instance, we certainly passed peak oil production in the U.S. in the early 1970s, but thanks to innovations around tar, shale and deep sea extraction the U.S. surpassed this in 2018. We might've delayed it, but I think we can all agree there will be a peak oil at some point. We all know oil is finite.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    It is possible that we may never see peak oil because we transition from it and leave it in the ground. I would argue that a peak and reduction caused by regulation, taxation, or replacement via innovation don't count for the original "Peak oil" theroy. There are 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves remaining, which is more than humanity has used throughout history, and the known reserves are going up over time, not down. There are another 3 trillion barrels of unconventional oil reserves (e.g. oil sands)
lhorie 5y ago
So many doomsday takes here. For me, this is the important tidbit: > Although both the business-as-usual and comprehensive technology scenarios point to the coming end of economic growth in around 10 years, only the BAU2 scenario “shows a clear collapse pattern, whereas CT suggests the possibility of future declines being relatively soft landings, at least for humanity in general.” > Both scenarios currently “seem to align quite closely not just with observed data,” Herrington concludes in her study, indicating that the future is open. What this is saying is that while one model predicts a more catastrophic scenario, the other predicts a slow drag (and even the catastrophic one doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world so to speak). But I don't think we need to go as far trying to predict things: you can just look at how resource-constrained economies are doing today: various places around the world are already forced to do water rationing, for example. If there's anything the whole global warming doom and gloom got wrong is the idea that it would affect the whole world more or less the same way everywhere. But now, studies and news articles both show that these events are going to deviate from averages (e.g. pockets of extreme forest fires in specific locations due to local weather conditions, predictions of ocean tides raising by nearly a foot in specific locations depending on specific astronomic conditions). It doesn't seem like a stretch to postulate that the effects of a collapse are already here for some places in the world, in one form or another, such as what we already see with water shortages or flood seasons due to pollution or forest fire seasons. Rather than some scenario where the entire world breaks out in civil war, it seems more logical to think that society will continue to live in a business-as-usual sort of way for a long time, except with ever increasing rates of location-specific annoyances/inconveniences/inequalities (e.g. no water tuesday or $70/lb salmon or terrible air quality for two months per year or what have you).
billytetrud 5y ago
> the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s Was "the book" she mentions the now debunked book "The Population Bomb"? The 70s had lots of catesrophic thinking because they had an economic crisis. Overpopulation concerns have been around for literally centuries, and crop up regularly from time to time. Thomas Malthus talked about it in the 1800s too, while at the same time not realizing that farming methods and enclosure acts were massively increasing the amount of food that could be produced - even tho he could literally see it happening from his doorstep. The article does a particularly bad job at summarising the premise of the paper. It doesn't say a single thing about why the paper thinks growth will reverse rather than simply slow (as one would expect if the premises of nearing limitations were true). It makes me wonder if the author even bothered to read the report. It is long, and who has time for that? (Hint, maybe someone who's getting paid to write about it could find the time). Here's a link to the actual report btw: https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Gr... It seems silly to me to sing the praises of a model that basically extrapolates historical data. Have trends continued? Yes. Was that surprising? Nobody has been surprised by this. The report claims that: "Technological solutions... may have some short term effect in relieving pressures caused by growth, but in the long run they do nothing to prevent the overshoot and subsequent collapse of the system." This statement is either wrong or meaningless. If its saying that technology successfully allows us to grow further for longer, but that we will inevitably overshoot what is sustainable and have to scale back - I'd agree but it seems kind of obvious. If instead its saying that technology has simply disguised the problems and will not delay "collapse of the system" - I think they have been proven wrong in every century in the past 1000 years. Technology absolutely helps make growth more sustainable. The report seems to claim that growth at the rates that existed back when it was written is unsustainable because of the interactions of complex positive and negative feedback loops. I couldn't find anywhere in the report that actually made that clear, but by skimming a few sections, thats what it seems like. I think its very clear that there are limits on various things humans do - or rather, consequences that become significant after enough relevant activity. Atmosopheric pollution is one of those things. We're certainly polluting the air too much, among other things. These have both ecological and health effects that are obviously negative. However, the paper also talks about "famine" and water availability. However, by pretty much any metric, there is a lower incidence of all kinds of hunger or thirst in the world. Things have gotten better and better every decade for centuries by most metrics. It talks about peak oil - well we've been talking about that one for a while. One day it will come, but its seeming more and more likely it will peak incredibly slowly rather than be a sudden crisis like the gas lines in the 70s. The economic problems we're seeing today are not caused by resource limits, but rather by government corruption in the vast majority of governments around the world that has lead to extracting money from the poor and giving to the rich. Generally bankers. Yes, we have a pollution problem, but we do not have a population problem. In fact, its projected that world population will peak in the 2060s. We do not have a phsical resource problem. The primary problems we have as a society is pollution, deforestation, and soil depletion. Those are the only sustainability problems I can think of (other than economic problems).
ellis0n 5y ago
It's time for CollapseOS, mechanic and water computers, game of life CPU etc. AI can build effective wooden computers
MetroWind 5y ago
People seem to be pretty optimistic that the prediction is wrong. The prediction is most likely wrong. The society might collapse before 2040… Yes the man kind is very good at fixing things. That's including fixing things for the worse…

215 points by ako 5y ago

URL redirects to https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicat...

reedjosh 5y ago

https://www.dltk-teach.com/fairy-tales/chicken-little/story.htm https://www.dltk-teach.com/fairy-tales/chicken-little/story....

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Societal collapse is not as unprecedented and deadly as the sky falling in. It's something that's happened before, many times: ever heard of “the fall of Rome”? And where is Rome now? A thriving city… within a completely different society to the one it had before.
- david927 5y ago
  This is talking about global resources. As resources dwindle they will get exponentially more expensive and become available only to a few. This isn't about a temporary societal collapse, and you would be a fool to ignore it.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    I'm not ignoring it anyway. I do think that monocropping and the like do pose a potential for a collapse. That said systems thinking and computer models have led to predictions of collapse only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics. Humans are highly adaptable and the power of the economic invisible hand is enormous. I for example will be growing more and more of my own food as I see the quality of food dwindle while the cost rise. Solar is only becoming cheaper. The future can be a great place, but sure we should think about what kind of future we may be facing if we don't make preparations or let someone else guide us there.
    - Layke1123 5y ago
      Ha ha I love this. On one hand, you criticize systems thinkers and computer models as only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics even though we see climate change devastation first hand, and on the other, you invoke the power of the "invisible hand". The irony.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    Resources aren't dwindling. You could fit the entire population of Earth in a space the size of Texas with the equivalent population density of NYC. To support all of those people, the Earth has more than enough nuclear fuel in the oceans for thousands of years. Water is not a problem either when you have oceans and unlimited amount of energy, and with water and limitless energy it's not that hard to grow enough food to feed everyone (Hydroponics, gene editing, artificial meat, etc). Perhaps in a thousand years we will run into some sort of natural limit, but by then I highly doubt humans will be a single planet species.
    - david927 5y ago
      You're uninformed. Resources are unequivocally dwindling. No question about it. It doesn't matter that there are only seven billion humans. We're consuming resources and we're doing so incredibly quickly. How much oil was in the ground 100 years ago versus today? You'll counter that we'll switch to solar. I agree. But do you know how long and costly such a switch will be? Water is not a problem because we have seawater? Do you know the struggles with desalination and how expensive it is? The main take away here isn't just that resources are dwindling. You need to understand that 100 years ago, you could just stick a single pipe in the ground and get massive amounts of oil. The EROI for oil was over 1200. It basically came free. In 1950 it was 60. Now it's around 1.6. Once it drops below one, it makes no sense to extract it. Whether or not oil "still exists" is moot. And this is the big point: all the cheap seats are taken. All the easy resources have been used and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for what's remaining. Even renewable resources have been swept clean. Less than 10% of big fish are left in the ocean. Yes, we can switch to fish farming but it will take a while, be much more expensive and produce a lot less fish. Hydroponics? Really? Do you know how expensive that would be? If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, you would just say, "It's fine! I'll just mine some iron and make a ship! And if I get thirsty I'm surrounded by ocean water!" It's simply not that easy. You don't seem concerned. It's probably because you're wealthy. This is a threat to the poorest of those seven billion, and it's a big threat. Don't be such a Pollyanna when it's about their lives.
- Kluny 5y ago
  You don't have to look back that far. 15 years ago, South Africa was a wealthy and growing country. This week, they have this going on: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-africa-looting-1.6102001 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-africa-looting-1.6102001 It's in response to the imprisonment of the former president, who was jailed for failing to appear in court for crimes that he definitely did commit. The looters and arsonists are mad that he's being held accountable.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    The looters are mad because he’s a prince in a major tribe in South Africa. They are also mad because despite almost three decades of democracy, they are still dirt poor
  - eloff 5y ago
    South Africa was doomed by apartheid. Democracy doesn't function if you have an uneducated populace. They were uneducated because of apartheid policies. It will take many generations for that stain to be undone. Leaving the policy in place was untenable for humanitarian and practical reasons. Simply repealing it and giving the vote to everyone was also untenable. It was a lose lose situation and the only good solution was and remains to leave while it's still possible. South Africa is an extreme case of how investment in education (severe underinvestment in this case) is strongly correlated with the future prospects of a nation.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      But it’s not just down to the level of investment. SA spends quite a lot on education. Granted, it doesn’t get much value for the money, but there’s something else wrong
      - eloff 5y ago
        Its not what it spends now specifically that is haunting it, it's the decades where it didn't educate the majority of its citizens. It's an effect that lags multiple generations.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
counternotions 5y ago
What is up with what appears to be the growing audience of “doom porn” enthusiasts?
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  That audience has always been there. In chaotic times doomsday scenarios seem reasonable. In peaceful times they seem exciting.
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    Always remember the doers, builders, fixers, and makers with the audacity to solve those very same problems have, and always will be there too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-and-the-prophet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-and-...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > What is up with what appears to be the growing audience of “doom porn” enthusiasts? It's a convenient excuse for complacency. If everything is going to shit in 2040, why bother acting now to better yourself, your community, your country or the world? Also, drama.
long_time_gone 5y ago
Without any context it’s hard to discern your point. Who is Chicken Little in this scenario?
- reedjosh 5y ago
  Yeah, I knew this was a cheap post. From my post below though... systems thinking and computer models have led to predictions of collapse only slightly more convincing than religious fanatics. Humans are highly adaptable and the power of the economic invisible hand is enormous. I for example will be growing more and more of my own food as I see the quality of food dwindle while the costs rise. Solar is only becoming cheaper. The future can be a great place, but sure we should think about what kind of future we may be facing if we don't make preparations or let someone else guide us there.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    So far, the power of the invisible hand has brought not much more besides suffering for the average person.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      The average person in the US lives better than a king did throughout most of history. You're free to go live in the wilderness if you think modernity has only brought about suffering, but capitalism brought you that device you typed this message on.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        I agree that the average person today lives like a king, but I disagree that capitalism is what brought it about. IMO, the capitalism = progress relationship is coincidental, not causal. The march of science and technology would have continued, capitalism or no capitalism. Even the Soviets, for all the problems and violence caused by their unfree economic system, managed to make tech and scientific progress work, albeit slower. And yes, capitalism brought me the smartphone that I'm typing on today: with all the harmful, attention-grabbing and addictive features. That's why I'm trying to quit smartphones altogether.

kmtrowbr 5y ago

Note: the graphs seem to be mislabeled / misordered. The initials in the upper left hand corner are accurate: CT: Comprehensive Technology, SW: Stabilized World, BAU2: Business As Usual.

danielodievich 5y ago

I don't know what ad keywords are hooked up to this, but when opening it on mobile it the ads I get in the middle are for planning my cremation, with happy and distinguished looking gray haired people congregated around the rose bushes and tasteful urns. Very appropriate to the subject.

gshubert17 5y ago

The KPMG research about the Limits to Growth scenarios is at https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html It is titled "Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data".

AlexanderDhoore 5y ago

Exponential growth on a finite planet. What could go wrong.

pope_meat 5y ago
Don't worry, a future technology will fix everything. Now get out there and buy a new car, buddy.
david927 5y ago
Technology has blessed us. We've come up with "super straws" to extract oil incredibly efficiently giving us cheap oil, we've devised huge barges which act essentially as vacuum cleaners for fish in the ocean giving us incredibly cheap fish. The problem is that this skews the curve that would normally slowly taper supply down, which would increase prices and lower demand. Now, instead, because of this blessed technology, we'll march quickly on full demand to the end and have nothing left. We'll empty the oceans of all the cheap fish and won't know until it's all gone.
gruez 5y ago
But it's not going to continue forever. AFAIK we're supposed to level out in 2100.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  60 years after the collapse of society, if the date in the heading is correct.
99_00 5y ago
Why would growth continue to be exponential? >The 2019 forecast from the United Nation's Population Division (made before the COVID-19 pandemic) shows that world population growth peaked at 2.1% per year in 1968, has since dropped to 1.1%, and could drop even further to 0.1% by 2100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
- 5y ago

z5h 5y ago

All the experts have been talking about a housing market collapse in Toronto for the past 15+ years. It’s been imminent and inevitable year after year … after year. Well, I guess these complex systems are hard to predict. But OK, let’s suppose this true. What are the best/recent books that discuss this?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Everyone in the Toronto analysis ignores dual incomes. Yeah, the median income isn't that great. But for those who are in couples? Working backwords from after tax income, it is about 120K-140K a year median. https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/mbf4z3/how_much_money_did_canadians_earn_in_2019_combien/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/mbf4...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  When I've seen measures of median income it's usually median family income.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Working backwords from after tax income, it is about 120K-140K a year median. But your source says that the median family (aka household, so it factors in both earners) income for non-seniors is only $93k, and with kids it's only $105k? Where are you getting $120k-140k from? Households where both earners are high income professionals?
  - swashboon 5y ago
    yep
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    That is the after tax income. I am converting it to the gross income that people usually use for comparing salaries.
    - 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago

We made the big mistake of not going whole hog at developing a high-temperature nuclear reactor circa 2000 or so.

xbpx 5y ago

For those interested in learning more about the agrowth perspective, and how investment in public commons can be a convincing solution I highly recommend Jason Hickel's work, specifically his book "Less is More". If you want the deep dive treatment I've just finished Thomas Piketty's "Capital and Ideology" and was very impressed with the thorough historical treatment. https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822

heyn05tradamu5 5y ago
Hickel gets basic facts wrong and distorts the views of his critics. The thread below walks through some of the basic errors he makes. https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1378730932308471809
- xbpx 5y ago
  Actually it's quite easy to poke holes in that rebuttal provided by the linked article in Max's tweet. Basically there is a lot hidden by looking at average income per person per country when inequality has risen dramatically everywhere. The 2nd link I posted delves into this deeply and I suggest reading that instead of short form hit pieces and tweets. (That applies to Jason and Max, they're both guilty of window dressing)
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> investment in public commons Investment in commons is something rich societies do. If we're predicated on a collapse hypothesis, the rich will focus on survival and power. That returns us to a zero-growth, zero-sum environment, which almost linearly leads to militarization. (If I have a choice between investing in research or buying munitions, and I believe society is about to collapse, I do the latter.) Between an army and a law defining XYZ as a common good, the army wins.

tunesmith 5y ago

I got into the World3 model and its offshoots a few years back... somewhere online I found a JS implementation of the model that let you fiddle with the various inputs that the model was sensitive to. I don't remember the details, but I quickly discovered that one of inputs was extremely sensitive and would impact the model dramatically, and in the opposite direction that you would expect. I think it was something along the line of business growth - if you increased business growth just a little bit, the worst projections of the model disappeared.

notjes 5y ago

Club of Rome hiring people to preach The Apocalypse 7.0, again and again and again.

giantg2 5y ago

"Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources." I'm sorry, but - No shit! Of course there are growth and population limits, and we are close to them. Everyone talks about global warming, but few talk about population and consumption as the main driver for that. We like the narrative that we have the technology to face climate issues and future resource scarcity because it means we're not doomed. We will either need unpalatable or forced lifestyle/societal changes or we will inevitably face these unwanted changes when consumption outpaces resources. Oh and China is now suggesting 3 kids per couple will be to tolerated...

ashtonkem 5y ago
Over population is not an issue for two reasons. 1 - Birth rates are falling. We’re getting pretty damned close to the peak of human population. There are some very easy steps we can do to expedite this, such as helping reduce infant mortality rate among the global poor, a move that is known to reduce fertility rates too. 2 - Consumption is wildly uneven among the world’s population. Focusing on population implies that those areas with high fertility rates are the issue, when in fact the primary limiting factor is and will remain the high consumption rate of the world’s richest nations.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Population momentum means population will peak at 11.2 billion people near the end of the century [1] before it declines. Total fertility rate drop isn't happening fast enough (need to get closer to 1 vs 2.1 replacement rate), and we've already locked in the expansion to 11.2 billion. 3 billion people can't afford to get enough nutrition [2]. That number will increase before it decreases. Consider we're already on the path to exceed our carbon budget [3], and billions of people are trying to climb out of poverty (which requires fossil fuels, resources, and food production, which we are already managing....poorly and unsustainably). Many countries still offer funds to people to have children and have pro-natalist policies (to goose economic policy and pay for elderly entitlements and stave off the economic contraction). We're not just headed off the cliff; we're pushing our foot on the gas. TLDR Those who consume the most will need to consume less, and even then there is likely not enough to go around for first world standards for all. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth [2] https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability [3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-...

99_00 5y ago

I predict that we will continue to see catastrophic prognostications in the future.

astroalex 5y ago

At the time of this comment, the charts in this article are mixed up. The "Business as usual", "Comprehensive technology" and "stabilized world" charts have incorrect captions.

DevKoala 5y ago

It’s like 2012 except for our civilization. /s

karmasimida 5y ago

I won't buy any prediction 5 years into future, let alone 20 years

faeyanpiraat 5y ago
I can accurately predict that in 20 years 240 months will pass in Africa.
- karmasimida 5y ago
  LoL, maybe I should specify. Any predictions aim to provide nontrivial insights
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  Nice try, Nostradamus!
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Just wait until a leap second or time zone change ruins your prediction

panax 5y ago

This reminds me of this report from 2002: https://www.wwf.fr/sites/default/files/doc-2018-10/lpr_living_planet_report_2002.pdf https://www.wwf.fr/sites/default/files/doc-2018-10/lpr_livin... "the world’s ecological footprint will continue to grow between 2000 and 2050 from a level 20 per cent above the Earth’s biological capacity to a level between 80 and 120 percent above it (Figure 30). In these scenarios, 9 billion people in 2050 would require between 1.8 and 2.2 Earth-sized planets in order to sustain their consumption of crops, meat, fish, and wood, and to hold CO2 levels constant in the atmosphere.... Two World3 scenarios were chosen: a standard scenario, which assumes no policy changes over the next 50 years; and an accelerated technology scenario, which assumes significant improvements in resource efficiency. In the standard scenario, the HEF grows and peaks around 2040 at about 150 per cent above the Earth’s biological capacity, while the HWI climbs to around 20 per cent above the 2000 level in 2030 but then falls away rapidly, as the Earth’s productive ecosystems are no longer able to sustain high levels of human consumption. In the accelerated technology scenario the HEF reaches a maximum of 60 per cent above biological capacity in 2020 and then declines back to the 2000 level by 2050, as more resource-efficient technologies reduce the footprint, while the HWI climbs and remains at almost 20 per cent above 2000 levels"

gorjusborg 5y ago

Don't worry, I have a plan. We just need to shorten the collapse. We'll do this by preserving the knowledge of our current society. We'll do that by archiving all human knowledge, a task carried out by a hand-picked group of archivists. We'll also need a second group, whose task it too important to make widely known. They'll be sent to the other side of the planet, and will work on their (extremely instrumental) thing. We'll shorten the collapse from thousands to tens of years. Who's with me?

E39M5S62 5y ago
I'm in! - The Mule
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CameronNemo 5y ago
I too think that dividing people into arbitrary groups is a productive way to ~~fuck people over~~ shorten the collapse.
cno-cyclist 5y ago
Remember to take some nuclear engineers with you, they'd make some excellent priests...
monocasa 5y ago
Viral marketing for The Foundation is kicking into high gear already I see (I kid, I kid).
- jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
  Greenpeace originally was based on The Foundation from Foundation.
fumar 5y ago
Sounds like the foundation of something big. I am in.
5y ago

parf02 5y ago

I wonder how the younger generation is supposed to plan for the future? Even myself as a 30 year old, I'm finding it very difficult to plan my financial future considering traditional personal finance knowledge can become irrelevant within my working life-time. Anyone have resources to guide my financial decisions taking into consideration these dooms-day scenarios? Index-fund investing seems bound to failure with such scenarios.

lolsal 5y ago
I'm interested in this also. As a 30-something I have no idea what to invest in for "retirement" or how to plan for the next 30 years. edit: I should say I lack faith in traditional retirement advice/planning, not that I have no idea how to do it.
- humbleMouse 5y ago
  Buy land with water availability and growable soil, build small cheap place to live, try to pay it off asap. That’s all you can do to prep
  - lolsal 5y ago
    I think you're over-simplifying - land with water access today doesn't mean anything in ten years with continued climate change. Unless you have water rights (and even if you do), that water won't necessarily be present (or potable) in ten years, and your water rights likely won't matter either.
    - humbleMouse 5y ago
      It’s not about water rights specifically. I’d argue that being by the Great Lakes or in one of the midwest river basins is a sure bet of having drinkable well water in 10 years
- wil421 5y ago
  Max out 401k, IRA if eligible, mutual funds for the rest, live below you means. Don’t finance more than 30% of your income (after taxes!) on house, cars, or boats. Live in or plan to move to a lower cost location during retirement. Don’t be too stingy and enjoy life!

DonnyV 5y ago

Is it me or is 2040 humanity's inflection point? Around that time general A.I. should be here. Climate change is wrecking havoc, most jobs will be automated, mid point of total insect collapse, severe water shortage will affect the entire planet, etc Just in time for my retirement. The last great kick in the nutz for GenX. Should I be buying a plot of land in northern Canada and prepping?

efficax 5y ago
Very doubtful that there will ever be general AI and significantly more doubtful that it is only 19 years away
- lolsal 5y ago
  I imagine progress in AI is hockey-stick shaped, not linear. We could have 18 years of stagnant progress and then be overwhelmed in year 19. It seems impossible to predict.
  - DonnyV 5y ago
    Yeah I think thats exactly whats going to happen. I've been watching old episodes of Star Trek Voyager and laughing to myself the model they used for computers then. Still thinking that a piece of digital data had to be put on a pad and given to someone. I don't think people realize how much in the future we live in right now with tech. A.I. now will train future A.I. and it will get faster and faster.
- thysultan 5y ago
  It's entirely possible if we can move to general all-photonic computing in the next 5 years.
f6v 5y ago
> Around that time general A.I. should be here. We'll be lucky if at least self-driving cars are on the roads in 19 years.
OJFord 5y ago

yongjik 5y ago

The graphs are so unspecific that it would fit in a fanfiction for Sid Meier's Civilization. "Resources" and "Pollution"? What resources and what pollution?

kosievdmerwe 5y ago
Also how would pollution still be growing exponentially if population and industrial production dropped off substantially?

imglorp 5y ago

Talking about resources needs to specifically call out fresh water management. It's not exactly a shortage but it's more essential than oil. When upstream dams a river, does downstream shrug and walk away? What about collecting rainfall on your own property? Ecology? Agriculture? Industry (hello Nestle)? Droughts affect power: Hoover dam is below capacity because Lake Meade is about 100 feet low and falling, plus Oroville dam is expected to shut down power this summer. Does this mean spinning up more carbon generators to fill in the hydro gaps? Desalination and pumping both take power. So many issues.

wil421 5y ago

> The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue. Not to worry guys! KPMG is on the case and can help your company do a risk assessment to prepare for collapse. Based on their finding they will implement a solution for you! /sarcasm

cjsplat 5y ago

I assume that January 19, 2038 is within the rounding error on that? (End of 32-bit UNIX time for the people who don't have this on their calendar already).

AceJohnny2 5y ago

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy of science-fiction books, one of my favorite ideas was of "full-planet" (?) business models. It posited that most business models were based on growth: sell more widgets to the population. Build more and more things. But the world markets are saturated, so there emerged a new approach of full-market business models, for example focused on repair, maintenance, and recycling. (this was a key conflict in the book, with the old actors trying to expand into Mars, which wanted none of it, and Mars finding new allies in the proponents of sustainable/renewable business)

TOGoS 5y ago
The usual way to address this is to have wars. Destroy lots of stuff and now you can make big loans for the rebuilding. This is why the economy boomed for a while after WWII.
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

digitcatphd 5y ago

Identifying a specific time frame significantly de-legitimizes this study, but its broad case - excluding any change of technology or societal behavioral shifts - is entirely valid. Merely global warming and AI reducing jobs and resources alone in the next 50 years is likely sufficient to cause severe changes to 'society' in its current form. Societies and species follow periods of advance and decline in both short and long-term and being in a state of surplus, we fail to recognize this or dismiss it as irrelevant and only impacting our own lifespan.

xyst 5y ago

Lake Mead is receding rapidly. California is in constant drought and wildfire state. O&G continues to destroy the planet with minimal repercussions. Unsustainable deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest. Unprecedented heat waves across the country/world. Increasing plastic pollution. Decreasing biodiversity. It’s only a matter of time until we have resource constraints (water, energy, clean air) and countries start wars over these scarce resources. Sounds about right. I’ll see you all in hell soon!

ineedasername 5y ago

Nope, per the article: collapse “does not mean that humanity will cease to exist,” but rather that “economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline, which will hurt food production and standards of living Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse, if the analysis is even accurate. It seems like the best selling book that put this out in the 70's traded on fear mongering, and now this article is just repeating it.

regularfry 5y ago
It depends how much standard of living is affected, and what nonlinear effects might go along with that. "Hurt food production", in the BAU2 scenario, means mass starvation as the food supply shrinks from feeding 7 billion to feeding less than 2 billion. Humanity hasn't seen that sort of contraction before. It is unlikely to be pretty.
pelasaco 5y ago
"Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse", if it doesn't cause War. Quite impossible that Countries won't fight each other to see who falls slower than the other.
aylmao 5y ago
> Economic decline that hurts standard of living is very far from a societal collapse, if the analysis is even accurate. This depends on the base standard we're talking about. If someone's standard goes from not having to think about energy consumption, to not being able to afford running the dishwasher or dryer, then sure, no big deal. If someone's standard goes from getting by to starving, they are going to fight. I imagine there's a lot of places around the world where a sharp decline in standard of living could lead to civil war.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Ah, excellent point. This is why I come to HN, because discussion. Will reveal when I need to consider something with more nuance and dig deeper into topics. It would definitely depend on how evenly spread the decline is. 10% (or whatever) evenly spread out would be bad, because a developed country can tighten its belt and not buy new things as much and focus on less waste, change eating habits to be a little more based on most productive crops instead if taste preference, etc. 10% for a a less developed country would, in terms of the relative utility of money, mean a lot more loss. And that's hoping they didn't decline more than a developed country. (By relative utility of money I mean that the more money a person has, the less that a single unit if money impacts you. $10k increase for a person who makes $35k is a noticeable step up in quality if life. For someone making $500,000k it changes practically nothing)

Zigurd 5y ago

The LtG projections show a wide variety of outcomes depending on the scenario being modeled. The thing that jumps out from what are otherwise very different graphs is that we are now in a place where there is high sensitivity to inputs: IF population growth stops, IF we transition to renewables, etc. outcomes are much less bad than if we crash through all the guardrails. Conventional economic metrics are like watching the tachometer when the engine is overheating.

briefcomment 5y ago

The Club of Rome is a standard bogeyman in conspiracy circles [1]. They are painted as pushing for significant depopulation, through whatever means necessary. If you consider involuntary depopulation as a form of societal collapse, I wonder how much of this will be a self fulfilling prophecy. [1] http://conspiracywiki.com/new-world-order/club-of-rome/ http://conspiracywiki.com/new-world-order/club-of-rome/

cs702 5y ago

In essence, all these dire forecasts are little more than fancy versions of Malthus's predictions, which assume that natural and other resources cannot be improved/increased or more efficiently used as necessary by human ingenuity to support and promote societal well-being.[a][b] Given how large the universe is, I'd bet there's a good chance that scientists, engineers, and enterprising people will find ways to make all these dire predictions wrong. -- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism [b] See also bmmayer1's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27836077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27836077

eruleman 5y ago
The beginning of infinity — knowledge created ex-nihilo.
minikites 5y ago
Human ingenuity is irrelevant if there isn't popular support for solving the problem. Look at climate change, there's plenty of evidence for its dire effects and plenty of ways we could be addressing it, but we're doing nothing because enough people believe it's a leftist conspiracy. Human ingenuity will always lose to human selfishness.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Human ingenuity can be applied to adaptation. Growing almonds in the desert beside golf courses in the desert doesn't really make sense, but engineering found a way.
  - revscat 5y ago
    There are limits. If rainfall stops no amount of engineering will make the rivers flow or crops grow. If the ocean acidifies and fish stocks plummet, there is no engineering solution for that. This faith people have in engineering just boggles my mind. Look to Venus. That is where our atmosphere is headed.
  - iiggyy 5y ago

Apofis 5y ago

I think it's hooey. China is doing just fine with 1.2 billion people. The US and Russia are no where close to their density.

boba7 5y ago

I think MIT is a scam and we can't predict the future. Thank you for your attention.

nyc_pizzadev 5y ago

Well, we are currently in the computer age which looks like it will be equal if not bigger than the previous industrial age. I believe when this paper was written, the computer age was in its infancy and the world was post industrial. As long as humans continue to innovate and explore into new areas, new ages will emerge and accelerate us forward. Maybe there will be some kind of physics breakthru which gives us easier access to space or some kind of human breakthru where we can alter our bodies. Who knows. Right, if we do nothing new, things will stagnate and eventually collapse.

ken47 5y ago

Assertions like that made in the title of this article are completely ridiculous. Imagine a person driving a car towards a concrete wall at 100 kph. If they keep driving 100 kph, they hit the wall in 2040. So do we predict that they hit the wall in 2040? NO. Any person in their right mind will hit the breaks, swerve, turn the car, etc. Not to mention, some clever entities may devise a way to destroy the wall or move it further down the road. Many comments here talk about "at the current rate of consumption, XYZ will happen." The current rate will not be constant. As we approach the wall, the wall will push back on us with a force that is inversely proportional to our distance from it. People, stop predicting the future with so much confidence. The smartest people have shown time and time again that they can't even predict trivial things. The balance of probabilities says that they'll be wrong again. Face it: in the grand scheme of things, we're not that smart.

bobongo 5y ago
> Any person in their right mind will Hmm..
- blooalien 5y ago
  Hahahah! You saw that, too, eh? ;) Humanity as a whole is clearly not "in their right mind". :(
ChainOfFools 5y ago
except the car has multiple steering wheels, one for each passenger. final direction input is a black box convergence function across all of them.

ccamrobertson 5y ago

The Club of Rome, peak oil, etc. are fantastic intellectual touch points to categorize people based on whether they believe in human ingenuity aided by economic incentives or not. The simplistic "resources" shown in the graphs does little to explain the methodology of the research, but seems incredibly questionable. For instance, we certainly passed peak oil production in the U.S. in the early 1970s, but thanks to innovations around tar, shale and deep sea extraction the U.S. surpassed this in 2018. This isn't new; in the 19th century Malthus' ghost was apparent as it was predicted that the earth couldn't feed more than a billion people, but thanks to the Haber–Bosch process we can fix nitrogen for fertilizers and feed nearly 8x that number. Certain resources will be completely extracted, but economic incentives will strongly encourage people to devise substitutes. Given how little of the Earth's mantle human activity has touched and the increasing likelihood that we will have technology solutions to manage externalities like excess C02, I'm super encouraged for our future prospects.

billytetrud 5y ago
Yes, these kinds of reports are incredibly biased. I see very little evidence of any "model" in the papers other than extrapolation and number tweaking to produce different scenarios. For sure, pollution, habitat destruction / deforestation, soil depletion, are all problems. But these aren't inevitable problems. They all have technological solutions - which the report dismisses as futile for some reason...
aylmao 5y ago
> For instance, we certainly passed peak oil production in the U.S. in the early 1970s, but thanks to innovations around tar, shale and deep sea extraction the U.S. surpassed this in 2018. We might've delayed it, but I think we can all agree there will be a peak oil at some point. We all know oil is finite.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  It is possible that we may never see peak oil because we transition from it and leave it in the ground. I would argue that a peak and reduction caused by regulation, taxation, or replacement via innovation don't count for the original "Peak oil" theroy. There are 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves remaining, which is more than humanity has used throughout history, and the known reserves are going up over time, not down. There are another 3 trillion barrels of unconventional oil reserves (e.g. oil sands)

lhorie 5y ago

So many doomsday takes here. For me, this is the important tidbit: > Although both the business-as-usual and comprehensive technology scenarios point to the coming end of economic growth in around 10 years, only the BAU2 scenario “shows a clear collapse pattern, whereas CT suggests the possibility of future declines being relatively soft landings, at least for humanity in general.” > Both scenarios currently “seem to align quite closely not just with observed data,” Herrington concludes in her study, indicating that the future is open. What this is saying is that while one model predicts a more catastrophic scenario, the other predicts a slow drag (and even the catastrophic one doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world so to speak). But I don't think we need to go as far trying to predict things: you can just look at how resource-constrained economies are doing today: various places around the world are already forced to do water rationing, for example. If there's anything the whole global warming doom and gloom got wrong is the idea that it would affect the whole world more or less the same way everywhere. But now, studies and news articles both show that these events are going to deviate from averages (e.g. pockets of extreme forest fires in specific locations due to local weather conditions, predictions of ocean tides raising by nearly a foot in specific locations depending on specific astronomic conditions). It doesn't seem like a stretch to postulate that the effects of a collapse are already here for some places in the world, in one form or another, such as what we already see with water shortages or flood seasons due to pollution or forest fire seasons. Rather than some scenario where the entire world breaks out in civil war, it seems more logical to think that society will continue to live in a business-as-usual sort of way for a long time, except with ever increasing rates of location-specific annoyances/inconveniences/inequalities (e.g. no water tuesday or $70/lb salmon or terrible air quality for two months per year or what have you).

billytetrud 5y ago

> the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s Was "the book" she mentions the now debunked book "The Population Bomb"? The 70s had lots of catesrophic thinking because they had an economic crisis. Overpopulation concerns have been around for literally centuries, and crop up regularly from time to time. Thomas Malthus talked about it in the 1800s too, while at the same time not realizing that farming methods and enclosure acts were massively increasing the amount of food that could be produced - even tho he could literally see it happening from his doorstep. The article does a particularly bad job at summarising the premise of the paper. It doesn't say a single thing about why the paper thinks growth will reverse rather than simply slow (as one would expect if the premises of nearing limitations were true). It makes me wonder if the author even bothered to read the report. It is long, and who has time for that? (Hint, maybe someone who's getting paid to write about it could find the time). Here's a link to the actual report btw: https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Gr... It seems silly to me to sing the praises of a model that basically extrapolates historical data. Have trends continued? Yes. Was that surprising? Nobody has been surprised by this. The report claims that: "Technological solutions... may have some short term effect in relieving pressures caused by growth, but in the long run they do nothing to prevent the overshoot and subsequent collapse of the system." This statement is either wrong or meaningless. If its saying that technology successfully allows us to grow further for longer, but that we will inevitably overshoot what is sustainable and have to scale back - I'd agree but it seems kind of obvious. If instead its saying that technology has simply disguised the problems and will not delay "collapse of the system" - I think they have been proven wrong in every century in the past 1000 years. Technology absolutely helps make growth more sustainable. The report seems to claim that growth at the rates that existed back when it was written is unsustainable because of the interactions of complex positive and negative feedback loops. I couldn't find anywhere in the report that actually made that clear, but by skimming a few sections, thats what it seems like. I think its very clear that there are limits on various things humans do - or rather, consequences that become significant after enough relevant activity. Atmosopheric pollution is one of those things. We're certainly polluting the air too much, among other things. These have both ecological and health effects that are obviously negative. However, the paper also talks about "famine" and water availability. However, by pretty much any metric, there is a lower incidence of all kinds of hunger or thirst in the world. Things have gotten better and better every decade for centuries by most metrics. It talks about peak oil - well we've been talking about that one for a while. One day it will come, but its seeming more and more likely it will peak incredibly slowly rather than be a sudden crisis like the gas lines in the 70s. The economic problems we're seeing today are not caused by resource limits, but rather by government corruption in the vast majority of governments around the world that has lead to extracting money from the poor and giving to the rich. Generally bankers. Yes, we have a pollution problem, but we do not have a population problem. In fact, its projected that world population will peak in the 2060s. We do not have a phsical resource problem. The primary problems we have as a society is pollution, deforestation, and soil depletion. Those are the only sustainability problems I can think of (other than economic problems).

ellis0n 5y ago

It's time for CollapseOS, mechanic and water computers, game of life CPU etc. AI can build effective wooden computers

MetroWind 5y ago

People seem to be pretty optimistic that the prediction is wrong. The prediction is most likely wrong. The society might collapse before 2040… Yes the man kind is very good at fixing things. That's including fixing things for the worse…