4@ — Wednesday, May 13, 1992 - North Shore News

Have we already gone beyond the limits?

IT *VOULD be absurd to try to rank books on ecology
according to the usual criterion, i.e., sales, although, if we
did, the Club of Rome’s original Limits to Growth, having
sold nine million copies, would be the all-time winner.

The key measurement ought to
be influence, in which case such
effots as Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring, E.F. Schumacher’s Smaif
is Beautiful, Amory Lovins’ Soft
Energy Paths, James Lovelock’s
Gaia: A New Look at Life on
Earth, and the Brundtland Com-
mission’s Our Common Future,
would all be contenders.

It is likely, however, that Limits
to Growth would still be the win-
ner, since it was the book that
single-handedly administered the
intellectual slap in the face that
humanity most needed.

It was almost like an [1th
Commandment: Thou Shalt Not
Grow Beyond the Carrying Ca-
pacity of the Global Eco-System.

And now, 20 years later, the
sequel to Limits to Growth is out,
published in Canada by Mc-
Clelland and Stewart. The title,
alas, says nearly all of it: Beyond
the Limits.

Which is where we’ve trespassed
in the two decades since we were
first sternly warned by the some-
what mysterious Club of Rome,
which commissioned the original
computer study, that we were fast
approaching the point where we
could simply not expand without
dragging the whole biosphere
down with us. ,

- The original book was widely
interpreted as a prophecy of
doom.

The headlines went like this: A
COMPUTER STUDY LOOKS
AHEAD AND SHUDDERS:
STUDY SEES DISASTER BY
2100; SCIENTISTS WARN OF
GLOBAL CATASTROPHE.

_ The Club of Rome became a
buzz-word in neoconservative
(and nat so neo) quarters for
cranky Commie-backed
vegetarian-hippie-Luddite-
New-Age anarchism, while the
book itself became a kind of
small-‘‘b”’ bible for environmen-
talists, and, indeed, anyone inter-

STRICTLY PERSONAL

ested in an egalitarian, wholistic
civilization that might be sustained
into the future; sustainability be-
ing the key.

The United Nations’ 1987
World Commission on Environ-
ment and Pevelopment, which
created the famous oxymoron
‘sustainable development’’ (a
term so elastic it can. be found on
the lips of Brian Mulroney and
David Suzuki alike), was inspired
mainly by the Club of Rome’s
work, and the Earth Summit in
Rio this June was cne of the
commission’s recommendations,
so it is easy to see the impact the
original study had.

There was always an air of the
Isaac Asimovian psychohistory
concept involved in the computer
models worked out by Jay For-
rester of the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology, which was
unavoidable but unfair, since the
original computer models were
based on quantifiable data, such
as the amount of additional ore
that has to be mined, ground up
and treated once the amount of
usable metal it contains fails
telow a certain threshold.

WV jetski ban backed

THE AMBLESIDE and Dun-
darave Ratepayers’ Association
has thrown its support behind
a bylaw that would ban the
launching of jetskis and water-,
skis from the West Vancouver
foreshore. .
“We are particularly con-
cerned in the Ambleside and
Dundarave waterfronts with
the noise generated from these
activities, and we also believe
that they are hazardous to

swimmers and dinghy sailors,"*
said association secretary Sheila
Adams.

She added that there is an
active youth sailing program at
the Hollyburn Sailing Club
“which deserves to be pro-
tected.”’

Adams said more people are
now using local beach areas
and the jetskis and waterskis
pose a danger to children
swimming in the Ambleside area.

THE CORPORATION
OF THE DISTRICT
OF WEST VANCOUVER

PUBLIC WORKS AND
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
SPRINKLING RESTRICTION NOTICE

The Waterworks Regulation Bylaw 3543, 1989 allows the
Municipality to set the days and hours for sprinkling.

The sprinkling regulations are effective from May 15 to

September 15.

Sprinkling is permitted as follows:
Even numbered properties on Even Calendar Days.
Odd numbered properties on Odd Calendar Days

Hours:

8:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.

5:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M.
Persons failing to comply with the regulations of this bylaw
shall be liable te the penalties under the Offence Act.

The gist of the original com-
puter projections was that if pres-
ent growth trends in world popu-
lation, pollution, food protection,
and resource depletion continued
unchanged, the limits to growth
on Planet Earth would be reached
within the next 100 years.

The most probable result would
be ‘‘a sudden and uncontrollable
decline in both population and
industrial capacity.”’

Scratch 20 years from the 100,
add new and better software and
computer models, and what does
the new Limits team of Denella
and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen
Randers find after picking
through the updated data base?

You were hoping things had
improved. Of course, they
haven’t. In fact, ‘‘human use of
many essential resources and gen-
eration of many kinds of pollu-
tants have already surpassed rates
that are physically sustainable.

Without significant reductions
in material and energy flows,
there will be in the coming de-
cades an uncontrollable decline in
per capita food output, energy
use, and industrial production.”’

Being techno-optimists, as op-
posed to Deep Ecologists, the
authors of the new Limits study
are quick to qualify their dire
warning that we are already
Sliding over the cliff’s edge with a
tub-thumping rallying cry around
the need to ‘‘ease down’’ on the
gas pedal and consumption pat- ~
terns alike.

“We think the human race is up
to the challenge,’’ they write.

it may even be ‘‘easy.”’ Yes,
that’s the very word they use!

All we, the ever-multiplying
hordes gnawing away at the planet
like parasites destroying their
host, have to do is achieve ‘‘a
comprehensive revision of policies
and practices that perpetuate
growth in material consumption
and in population.”

Oh, and while we're at it, we'd
better go for ‘‘a rapid, drastic in-
crease in the efficiency with which
materials and energy are used.”’

If you can achieve the necessary
state of detachment so that you
don’t break down weeping for you
children, Beyond the Limits makes
fascinating reading.

Learn all about inevitable over-
shoots, oscillations and collapse.

Collapse, for instance, happens

“if the signal from the limit is
delayed and if the environment is
irreversibly eroded when
overstressed.”’

In such a case, ‘“‘the growing
economy will overshoot its carry-
ing capacity, degrade its resource
base, and collapse.’’

At times, the book reads like a
map showing the route directly to
hell, but the authors do spend a
fair amount of their time
reiterating their belief that all is
not absolutely lost.

They offer a wide variety of
scenarios, not all of which end
with the equivalent of the Irish
Potato Famine hitting the whole

In some scenarios, they argue
that a transition to a sustainable
society is ‘‘probably possible’’
without reductions in either popu-
lation or industrial output.

Unfortunately, in almost every
scenario ‘‘some overshoots are in-
evitable (having already happen-
ed),”’ and this includes extinction
of many species.

Like all sequels, Beyond the
Limits follows a trajectory set in
motion by its original, soit can’t |
hope to make the same kind of
political impact. But it gives great
ripple effect. Required reading for
doom-and-gloomers and Positive
thinkers alike.

“SUNSHINE SPECIALIST” J

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