As we enter the next four years of American history, the defining word at this juncture seems to be “uncertainty.” But life, like the weather, is always uncertain.
I’ve been tracking environmental issues for half a century, beginning before the 1972 publication of “The Limits to Growth” (LTG). It was the first report to the Club of Rome on the world problematique. LTG describes the complex of crucial problems (political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural) that humanity faces. LTG was subtitled “A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind.”
Global warming was not included. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed 16 years later, although ExxonMobil researchers had been tracking climate change internally since the late 1970s.
The original objectives of the LTG study were:
1. Gain insight into the limits of our world system and constraints those limits put on human numbers and activities.
2. Identify and study the dominant elements, and their interactions, that influence the long-term behavior of world systems.
3. Warn of the likely outcomes of contemporary economic and industrial policies with a view to influencing transformation to a sustainable lifestyle.
LTG’s projections suggested that “in the absence of significant alterations in resource utilization, it is highly likely that there will be an abrupt and unmanageable decrease in both population and industrial capacity.” Authors emphasized that these projections of then-current trends were not inevitable; they could be avoided by collective international willpower.
Follow-up studies published in 1992, 2004, 2012 and 2022 corroborated trends, though details differed. Some specific predictions lacked accuracy, but LTG’s basic thesis — "unlimited economic growth on a finite planet is impossible” — was “indisputably correct.”
As this is written, fires ravage Los Angeles. Globally, international agencies work to blunt other ravages of climate change and resource depletion. Meanwhile, innocent victims of natural disasters continue to lose their properties and lives.
Last November a hopeful study appeared in Foresight by Nafeez Ahmed, founding director of the System Shift Lab. Ahmed suggests a new way of looking at shared global problems. His paper — “Planetary phase shift” as a new systems framework to navigate the evolutionary transformation of human civilization — offers a glimpse of positive possibilities emerging from the issues examined in LTG studies. Ahmed’s paper addresses the “lack of unifying theoretical systems frameworks.” It offers a new “collective forward intelligence” for making sense of disparate trends.
My translation: To minimize consequences of trends explored in the LTG and similar studies, we must better understand physical, ecological and political forces shaping our future, then develop and implement a unifying systems framework that integrates real-time monitoring of empirical information from interacting ecological, sociopolitical and economic global systems.
These efforts, Ahmed writes, could create a new “collective forward intelligence” able to make sense of disparate trends and processes, symptoms of a wider planetary system. It must also construct plausible, accurate futures, scenarios of possibilities to underpin national and international decision-making. Such efforts require transparent international cooperation and mutual trust to minimize, and eventually mitigate, impending global problems — ecological, political and socioeconomic.
Ahmed suggests Earth is facing a “planetary phase shift,” in which human civilization is currently undergoing a significant and potentially transformative period. The multiple global crises across ecological, social and economic systems suggest this. These could “lead to either a societal collapse or a radical evolution into a new phase of civilization, signifying a fundamental shift in our relationship with the planet.” I would add, “and with each other.”
What might it take to recognize and nurture our global interdependencies, to create new international governing institutions to monitor, mobilize and allocate natural and human resources for the betterment of civilization at large?
Ahmed suggests “humanity is at a critical juncture where the current industrial civilization model might be nearing its end, potentially triggering a major societal transformation.” This “planetary phase shift” will require transformation of the current industrial civilization model. And that will require cooperation on a level never before attained.
In 1945, major powers created a flawed United Nations to rebuild international trust and cooperation after World War II. LTG studies and recent findings suggest that impending catastrophes, which transcend political boundaries and were undreamt of in 1945, could bring civilization to its knees. What might it take to recognize and address collectively our shared needs, our common humanity?
Some possibilities are suggested in a 2020 Cambridge University publication, “Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century.” The text is freely accessible at bit.ly/4ghISQo.
Haug and his editor and wife, Jolie, work together on many projects. Contact Pete at petes.pen9@gmail.com. His internet archives are at favs.news/author/petehaug/.
