Starvation is a distant memory in both countries.
The Club of Rome refused to take a look at the beneficial effects of the "Green Revolution," pioneered by American scientists in the 1960's. This revolution increased Indian agricultural production to the point that the country was not only able to feed itself, but to do it well. As soon as China gave its peasants 1/2 acre to farm on their own (in the 1960's), overall food production in China climbed 30%. The freeing of the Chinese farms in the 1980's by Deng Xiao Ping not only increased agricultural production; it dramatically increased peasant income.
Poorer Workers. The argument of the Club of Rome was pure socialism, and should have been recognized as such in 1972. Compare the average lifestyle of an OECD citizen today and in 1972: Home ownership, automobile ownership, richness of diet, ability to travel -- all are drastically improved today as compared to that time. The Club of Rome should have known better, as the 1950's and the 1960's saw the rise of Germany, Japan, France and the UK in average citizens' income. The United States enjoyed a decade of prosperous growth, started by JFK's tax cuts in 1962. In short, workers across the income spectrum grew richer, not poorer.
Depleted World Resources. This is the most disappointing prediction for those of the Club of Rome. How could the world have more resources today than in 1972? Isn't it true that the more we extract, the less we have? Paradoxically, we have more oil reserves, more gas reserves, and more basic metal reserves today than we did in 1972. The reason is that exploration and development technologies have improved our extractive capabilities. More efficient use of the materials extracted means that we can stretch the use of those materials for many more centuries than was thought possible in 1972. Whereas the gas price hikes of the 1970's (1974 and 1979) were 'devastating' to the economy, today's price hikes are much less injurious. That is because energy is a much smaller part of the economy than it was then.
As the developed world grows, it relies less and less on extraction, manufacturing and basic materials. To put it crudely, the materials cost of a single semiconductor...
As we move more and more to a service-driven economy in the developed world, world resources become people and services, not ore out of the ground.
In the opinion of this author, the World3 model failed because of its neo-Malthusian lack of
trust or understanding in human progress. Humans are not sheep waiting to be sheared: they react to their
environment. As the costs of air
pollution rise and/or as incomes rise, citizens choose to spend more to clean their environment.
One can argue that the world has more conflict today than in 1972, and therefore the effects predicted by the Club of Rome were muted. This author would argue that the world today is a much more peaceful
place, which allows for the flowering of the world's
population. What is clear is that if there is
genocide, an ethnic cleansing or a populist uprising in the world today, people will know about it. The millions killed in the
Cultural Revolution will never be accounted for because there was little public knowledge or recognition. Today, the military dictators of Burma,
North Korea or Iran are no longer able to get away with
murder in silence. Although religious differences still exist today, they are hashed out in a public environment. Gone is the secrecy and repression of the Cold War period -- dictators can no longer hide behind their loyalty to the
Soviet Union, China or the United States.
The Club of Rome's predictions were wrong in 1972, and are wrong today. This author takes a much more optimistic view of citizens -- their ability to understand, adapt and change to their environment. As compared with 1972, we have many more people on this
earth, but also…
