WSJ: New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears

Ακόμα και Wall Street Journal αρχίζει να αναρωτιέται για το αν πραγματικά υπάρχουν όρια στην ανάπτυξη.

Το αναφερόμενο βιβλίο υπάρχει και σε καινούργια έκδοση: " The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update " (έχω την καινούργια έκδοση)

Ενδείκνυται για όσους ενδιαφέρονται για μια μη γραμμική θεώρηση του συστήματος

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120613138379155707.html

Wall Street Journal By JUSTIN LAHART, PATRICK BARTA and ANDREW BATSON

"… Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of "The Limits to Growth," says the book was too optimistic in one respect. The authors assumed that if humans stopped harming the environment, it would recover slowly. Today, he says, some climate-change models suggest that once tipping points are passed, environmental catastrophe may be inevitable even "if you quit damaging the environment."

One danger is that governments, rather than searching for global solutions to resource constraints, will concentrate on grabbing share.

China has been funding development in Africa, a move some U.S. officials see as a way for it to gain access to timber, oil and other resources. India, once a staunch supporter of the democracy movement in military-run Myanmar, has inked trade agreements with the natural-resource rich country. The U.S., European Union, Russia and China are all vying for the favor of natural-gas-abundant countries in politically unstable Central Asia.

Competition for resources can get ugly. A record drought in the Southeast intensified a dispute between Alabama, Georgia and Florida over water from a federal reservoir outside Atlanta. A long-running fight over rights to the Cauvery River between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu led to 25 deaths in 1991.

Economists Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley and Shanker Satyanath and Ernest Sergenti of New York University have found that declines in rainfall are associated with civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Sierra Leone, for example, which saw a sharp drop in rainfall in 1990, plunged into civil war in 1991….."