Os Limites do Crescimento

Em 1972 foi publicado um livro que causou muita polémica e debate : "Os Limites do Crescimento". Este foi o resultado do trabalho de investigação realizado por uma equipa do Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) coordenada por Donella Meadows, a pedido do Clube de Roma, uma associação informal de empresários, estadistas e cientistas.

Basicamente, afirmou-se na altura que, ao ritmo do crescimento da população, da utilização de recursos naturais, da poluição, etc., por finais do Séc. XXI a Humanidade correria sérios riscos de sobrevivência. Muito se escreveu a desvalorizar os argumentos apresentados, frequentemente deturpando-os. Trinta anos depois surge uma segunda actualização daquela obra: "Limits to Growth - The 30-Year Update".

A seguinte transcrição resume bem o que está em causa:

« What the authors said in 1972:

"If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth in this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrolled decline in both population and industrial capacity"

How the critics responded:

"With current and near current technology, we can support 15 billion people in the world at twenty thousand dollars per capita for a millennium - and that seems to be a very conservative statement."

- Herman Kahn

"The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today´s Western living standards."

- Julian Simon

The emerging consensus today:

"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about."

- «"World Scientists" Warning to Humanity» signed by more than 1600 scientists, including 102 Nobel laureates, from 70 countries»