In 1968 a group of thought leaders from the world of business and intelligentsia founded the Club of Rome and would go on to produce a report of some renown in 1972, The Limits of Growth, that has sold some 30 million copies since its initial publication. The general gist of the report is that without substantial changes in the world’s rate of resource consumption “the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” Whether the former is even an issue is a point of debate - although the world’s population has more than tripled since 1950, current projections predict that as a matter of course the planet’s population will begin to level off and decline slightly after 2050 (see chart below). More importantly, despite the fact that The Limits of Growth overall projection is approximately 100 years out (putting us at the year 2072), there are a few projections in the report that hypothesized us hitting the proverbial ceiling and running short by now of all sorts of metals, fuels, minerals, and space.

 

To the contrary, the chart at the top of the three below is world GDP since 1960 while the one in the middle is GDP per person since 1960! The world’s economy has been growing at a steady rate for 60 years with very few hiccups along the way, particularly of the resource depletion kind.

 

But why is that? Human ingenuity, technology, and economics. When Thomas Robert Malthus predicted food shortages for all humankind way back in 1798 he did not account for fertilizer, modern farm machinery and techniques. When oil and gas shortages became a concern few prognosticators envisioned the fracking and shale revolution. Economically, the aforementioned rise in the world’s and per capita GDP is a snapshot of the rise in economic prosperity and the reduction of poverty throughout the globe.

We are not naïve enough to think that human ingenuity and technology is a panacea for all of the world’s social and economic ills. There is still a war in Ukraine, climate change continues to be debated, poverty and preventable diseases have not been completely eradicated, and there are substantial political and ideological differences between the US and China – two of the world’s economic powerhouses. Regardless, despite humankind’s penchant for stories of doom and gloom, which are delivered in spades, we prefer to steer away from them and focus on the positive – there has been a lot of it historically and we have no doubt there will be in the future.

Randy and Ian

 

World Population Reaches 8 Bilion chart source: https://www.statista.com/chart/28744/world-population-growth-timeline-and-forecast/
World and Per Capita GDP charts source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/gdp-gross-domestic-product