'Limits to Growth' Author Dennis Meadows 'Humanity Is Still on the Way to
Destroying Itself'
12/0
8/2012
In 1972, environmental guru Dennis Meadows predicted in his seminal study
"The Limits to Growth" that the world was heading toward an economic
collapse. Forty years on, he tells SPIEGEL ONLINE that nothing he has seen
since has made him change his mind.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Meadows, 40 years ago you published "The Limits to
Growth" together with your wife and colleagues, a book that made you the
intellectual father of the environmental movement. The core message of the
book remains valid today: Humanity is ruthlessly exploiting global resources
and is on the way to destroying itself. Do you believe that the ultimate
collapse of our economic system can still be avoided?
Meadows: The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed
industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now
start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry.
Their political and financial power is so great and they can prevent change.
It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to
evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Several central forecasts you made in the book have come
true, the exponential growth of the world's population, for example, and
widespread environmental destruction. Your prediction regarding economic
growth, namely that it would ultimately cease and the global economy would
collapse, has not yet come to pass.
Meadows: The fact that the collapse hasn't occurred so far doesn't mean it
won't take place in the future. There is no doubt that the world is
changing, and we will have to go along with it. There are two ways to do
that: One is, you see the necessity of change ahead of time and you make the
change, and the second is that you don't and are finally forced to do it
anyway. Let's say that you're driving a car inside a factory building. There
are two ways to stop: Either you put on the brakes or you keep going and hit
the wall. But stop you will, because the building is finite. And the same
holds true for Earth's resources.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That sounds convincing, but is it really true? Will not
private companies react to dwindling resources with innovation in an effort
to maintain profitability?
Meadows: The really big changes don't come from inside of established
industries. Who made the iPhone? Not Nokia, not Motorola, nor any of the
other established mobile phone producers. It came from Apple, totally
outside the industry. There are many other examples of this kind.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about in areas that are under state control or
regulation?
Meadows: That's even worse. Our history with fishing shows that we are
destroying the oceans' ecosystems, for example. And we're using our
atmosphere as a free industrial waste dump. Nobody has an incentive to
protect them.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is not the desire for humanity's survival enough of a
motivation?
Meadows: You see, there are two kinds of big problems. One I call universal
problems, the other I call global problems. They both affect everybody. The
difference is: Universal problems can be solved by small groups of people
because they don't have to wait for others. You can clean up the air in
Hanover without having to wait for Beijing or Mexico City to do the same.
Global problems, however, cannot be solved in a single place. There's no way
Hanover can solve climate change or stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For
that to happen, people in China, the US and Russia must also do something.
But on the global problems, we will make no progress.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you not underestimating people and the reaction when our
backs are to the wall? Australian businessman and environmentalist Paul
Gilding, for example, argues in his book "The Great Disruption" that while a
crisis is coming, humanity will mobilize to fight it as seen during times of
war.
Meadows: He is right. But will it succeed? It could, if the delays were very
short. But unfortunately, they are not. In climate change, for example, the
delays are very long. Even if we were to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
to zero today, warming would still continue for centuries. The same is true
for soil, which we are destroying globally. Recovery can take centuries.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Surely technological innovation has served to reduce the
impact of some long-term problems. Since your book appeared four decades
ago, for example, modern medicine has increased life expectancy and reduced
infant mortality rates. New technologies have dramatically increased
harvests and computers and the Internet have brought the world closer
together and improved access to education.
Meadows: Technology doesn't invent itself. These achievements were the
results of decades of hard work, and someone has to pay for these programs.
One big source of money is the military. Another is corporations, and they
are not motivated to solve global problems, they're motivated to make money.
The drug companies in the United States spend more money on hair-loss
prevention than on preventing HIV infections. Why? Because rich people go
bald and poor people get HIV.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But imagine the profits that would accrue to the inventor of
a new, clean and limitless source of energy.
Meadows: I hope you're not talking about fusion, because that's bullshit. I
think we will discover a major new energy source. But afterwards, it would
take decades for it to make an impact. Even if there was no resistance, even
if there were no environmental impacts and even if it wouldn't make a lot of
people bankrupt -- still it would take a long time. So if someone tells you
that technology is going to save us just like that, he does not know how
technology is developed.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about resources. Past forecasts predicted that there
would be hardly any oil left by 2012, but there still seems to be plenty
available. Recent estimates even show that the US might soon produce more
oil than Saudi Arabia.
Meadows: That may very well be. But the oil reserves we are talking about
are scarce and very expensive to exploit. And they, too, will be depleted
one day. And then we have a problem. Here's an example: I have a neighbor,
she's rich. Her electric bill is, let's say, 1 percent of her income. Then
comes Hurricane Sandy, and suddenly she had no electricity in her house.
Does her quality of life go down by 1 percent? No! Her food is spoiled; she
can't turn on her lights; she can't work anymore. It's a disaster for her.
Take a look around. The chair you sit on, the glass windows, the lights --
everything is here for one single reason: We enjoy cheap energy.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Let's assume that you are right and that the collapse will
arrive in this century. What will it look like?
Meadows: It will look different in different places. Some countries are
already collapsing, and some people won't even notice. There are almost a
billion people who are starving to death these days, and people here
basically aren't noticing. And there is the issue of speed: The difference
between a decline and a collapse is speed. The rich can buy their way out of
a lot of things. The end of fossil energy, for example, will be gradual. But
climate change will come to the industrial countries no matter what. And the
geological record clearly shows that the global temperature doesn't increase
in a linear way. It jumps. If that happens, a collapse will occur. But it
would be nothing new, of course. Societies rise and fall. They have been
doing so for 300,000 years.
Interview conducted by Markus Becker
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Received on Sat Dec 08 2012 - 18:40:15 EST
