What Next On World Models?
| Date | 01 August 1972 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711787200400305 |
| Published date | 01 August 1972 |
| Author | Pauline K. Marstrand |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
257
WHAT
NEXT
ON
WORLD
MODELS?
PAULINE
K.
MARSTRAND
By
financing
first
the
study
by
the
Scientific
Committee
on
Protection
of
the
Environment,
published
as
a
report
in
June
1971
and
then
the
system
dynamics
models
of
the
world
at
MIT,
resulting
in
the
publication
of
’The
Limits
to
Growth’
in
the
same
year,
the
Club
of
Rome
has
initiated
several
important
debates.
These
centre
round
various
issues - Can
we
control
growth
and
thus
avoid
resource
depletion?
Is
pollution
an
unavoidable
con-
comitant
of
development?
Must
development
result
in
population
explosion,
land
degradation
and
social
disruption?
If
we
could
determine
the
key
factors
in
global
development
could
we
order
things
so
as
to
achieve
optimum
levels
of
resource
utilisation,
industrialisation
and
population,
and
what
would
these
levels
be?
What
kinds
of
economic
relationships
are
required?
Perhaps
because
the
most
dramatic
of
the
unwanted
side
effects
of
development
have
occurred
in
the
U.S.
and,
even
more
rapidly,
in
Japan,
the
most
clamorous
calls
for
cessation
of
present
growth
tendencies
have
come
from
America;
but
they
have
a
sympathetic
echo
in
every
industrialised
country,
where
(apart
from
the
very
wealthy,
who
can
and
do
live
where
and
how
they
like,
and
the
very
poor,
whose
choice
is
often
life
or
death)
there
is
a
large
and
growing
mass
of
people
with
sufficient
education
to
expect
more
from
life
than bare
subsistence
and
satisfaction
of
basic
material
wants.
These
people
have
been
led
to
believe
that
the
expansion
of
science-based
industry
would
bring
vastly
improved,
though
generally
unspecified,
conditions
of
life
for
all.
All
that
most
of
them
have
seen
is
a
colossal
growth
in
the
burdens
laid
upon
them
in
order
to
keep
paying
for
the
material
manifestations
of
this
industry.
Although
most
of
us
could
not
now
do
without
some
of
these
manifestations
we
often
feel
that
we
have
been
trapped
into
serving
a
far
too
complicated
system,
in
which
most
of
the
benefits
seem
to
flow
somewhere
else.
In
this
climate
of
feeling,
protagonists
of
anti-science,
or
scientists
like
Commoner
and
Ehrlich
who
called
a
halt,
have
received
an
increasingly
sympathetic
hearing.
This
has
not
been
lost
on
the
media,
and
Radio,
Television
and
Press
have
all
played
up
the
’doom’
side
of these
pronouncements
and
exploited
their
news
value.
Following
’A
Blueprint
for
Survival’
issued
as
a
special
number
of
’The
Ecologist’
in
January
1972,
which
accorded
an
accolade
to
Forrester’s
’World
Dynamics’,
the
U.K.
publication
of
’The
Limits
to
Growth’
found
very
fertile
ground
and
was
followed
by
a
spate
of
scientific
and
popular
meetings
on
the
resources
crisis,
and
by
some
attempt
to
launch
a
’zero
population
growth’
movement
this
side of
the
Atlantic.
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