With the model specified, a computer can be used to show how the system, as described for each of its parts, would behave. Given a set of beginning conditions, the computer can calculate and plot the results that unfold through time.
The world today seems to be entering a condition in which pressures are rising simultaneously from every one of the influences that can suppress growth — depleted resources, pollution, crowding, and insufficient food. It is still unclear which will dominate if mankind continues along the present path. Figure 2 shows the mode of behavior of this world system given the assumption that population reaches a peak and then declines because industrialization is suppressed by falling natural resources. The model system starts with estimates of conditions in 1900. Adjustments have been made so that the generated paths pass through the conditions of 1970.
In Figure 2 the quality of life peaks in the 1950's and by 2020 has fallen far enough to halt further rise in population. Declining resources and the consequent fall in capital investment then exert further pressure to gradually reduce world population.
But we may not be fortunate enough to run gradually out of natural resources. Science and technology may very well find ways to use the more plentiful metals and atomic energy so that resource depletion does not intervene. If so, the way then remains open for some other pressure to arise within the system. Figure 3 shows what happens within this system if the resource shortage is foreseen and avoided. Here the only change from Figure 2 is in the usage rate of natural resources after the year 1970. In Figure 3, resources are used after 1970 at a rate 75 per cent less than assumed in Figure 2. In other words, the standard of living is sustained with a lower drain on the expendable and irreplaceable resources. But the picture is even less attractive!
By not running out of resources, population and capital investment are allowed to rise until a pollution crisis is created. Pollution then acts directly to reduce birth rate, increase death rate, and to depress food production. Population which, according to this simple model, peaks at the year 2030 has fallen to one-sixth of the peak population within an interval of 20 years — a world-wide catastrophe of a magnitude never before experienced. Should it occur, one can speculate on which sectors of the world population will suffer most. It is quite possible that the more industrialized countries (which are the ones which have caused such a disaster) would be the least able to survive such a disruption to environment and food supply. They might be the ones to take the brunt of the collapse.
Figure 3 shows how a technological success (reducing our dependence on natural resources) can merely save us from one fate only to fall victim to something worse (a pollution catastrophe). There is now developing throughout the world a strong undercurrent of doubt about technology as the savior of mankind. There is a basis for such doubt. Of course, the source of trouble is not technology as such but is instead the management of the entire technological-human-political-economic-natural complex.
Figure 3 is a dramatic example of the general process discussed earlier wherein a program aimed at one trouble symptom results in creating a new set of troubles in some other part of the system. Here the success in alleviating a natural resource shortage throws the system over into the mode of stopping population caused by industrialization which has been freed from natural resource restraint. This process of a solution creating a new problem has defeated many of our past governmental programs and will continue to do so unless we devote more effort to understanding the dynamic behavior of our social systems.
*This was extracted from a paper (Reference item # D-4468) copyrighted in 1971 by Jay W. Forrester. It is based on his testimony for the Subcommittee on Urban Growth of the Committee on Banking and Currency, U.S. House of Representatives, on October 7, 1970.
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