Published 2022 – What can a 50-year-old model tell us about the future of humanity?
In this Earth4All deep-dive paper, Gaya Herrington compares real-world data with scenarios from the World3 model used in the 1972 report The Limits to Growth. Her analysis finds that observed global trends remain closely aligned with several of the model’s scenarios, including one in which pollution drives major declines in human welfare.
What is The Limits to Growth model?
The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 by a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the Club of Rome, used the World3 system dynamics model to examine how population, food production, industrial output, non-renewable resources and pollution interact over time.
World3 was designed to explore how changes in one part of the global system affect others. It accounts for feedback loops, delays and exponential growth or decline. The model did not make a single prediction about the future. It tested different assumptions to show how different choices could produce different outcomes.
Herrington revisits four of these scenarios using empirical data: Business as Usual (BAU), Business as Usual 2 (BAU2), Comprehensive Technology (CT) and Stabilised World (SW).
What did the comparison with real-world data find?
Herrington compared World3’s scenarios with data on population, fertility, mortality, pollution, industrial output, food, health and education services, non-renewable resources, human welfare and ecological footprint.
The analysis found close overall alignment between observed data and all four scenarios, with BAU2 and CT tracking the data most closely at the time of the study. The Stabilised World scenario, which produces the smallest declines in welfare, showed the greatest divergence from observed trends.
The scenarios also point to different causes and outcomes:
- Business as Usual: continued growth eventually leads to decline through resource depletion.
- Business as Usual 2: greater resource availability delays the resource constraint but leads to a more severe pollution-driven decline.
- Comprehensive Technology: rapid technological innovation helps avoid outright collapse, although welfare and essential services still decline.
- Stabilised World: society changes its priorities, reducing material consumption while investing more in health, education, pollution reduction and resource efficiency.
What does the paper say about technology and economic growth?
Herrington argues that technology is an essential part of a sustainable future, but technology alone cannot remove every planetary limit. In the World3 scenarios, overcoming one constraint can expose another.
The paper therefore asks a broader question: what should economic growth be for?
Herrington’s analysis argues for moving from an economic system centred on continuous material and industrial growth towards one that prioritises human wellbeing, resource efficiency and environmental protection while meeting people’s basic needs.
Does The Limits to Growth predict global collapse?
The paper does not present The Limits to Growth as a prediction that humanity will disappear. Instead, collapse in the World3 scenarios refers to major declines in human systems and living standards, with the severity and timing depending on the assumptions used.
Herrington’s comparison suggests that the data available in 2020 remained close to scenarios in which global welfare, food production and industrial output eventually decline. Her peer-reviewed study also found that the scenarios begin to diverge more significantly after 2020, making the choices represented by those scenarios increasingly important.
Why does this research matter today?
50 years after The Limits to Growth, the central question remains how humanity can provide a high quality of life while operating within the limits of a finite planet.
Herrington connects the World3 findings with newer research on climate change, planetary boundaries and ecological footprints. She also links the analysis to Earth4All, a later modelling initiative that builds on the legacy of The Limits to Growth and examines pathways towards human wellbeing within planetary limits.
The paper’s message is ultimately about choice. The World3 scenarios show that different assumptions about resources, technology and societal priorities produce very different futures. The Stabilised World scenario offers one route in which human welfare remains high while material consumption and environmental impacts are reduced.
About the author
Gaya Herrington is an internationally known sustainability researcher and wellbeing economist and member of the Club of Rome. She is also a member of the Earth4All Transformational Economics Commission.
Read the paper The Limits to Growth model: still prescient 50 years later to explore the World3 scenarios, the evidence behind Herrington’s comparison and what a 50-year-old model can tell us about economic growth, planetary limits and human wellbeing today.
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