Limits to growth : a report for the club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of mankind

In July 1970 an international research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a study of the effects and limits of continued worldwide growth- a study commissioned by the Club of Rome as part of their Project on the Predicament of Mankind. This non-technical report of their findings is a calm and masterfully coherent survey of mankind's problems and options.

The MIT team carefully studies the fundamental limits to growth in global population, agriculture, resource-use, industry, and pollution, and shows how these factors interact with each other. They conclude that, even under the most optimistic assumptions about advances in technology, the world cannot support present rates of economic and population growth for more than a few decades from now. By simulating the behaviour of the world in a large scale computer model, the MIT researchers also show that only by a concerted attack on all the major problems at once can man achieve the state of equilibrium necessary to his survival.