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"The report makes one thing abundantly clear: there is a limit to everything," says Japan's Yoicha Kaya, a club member and systems analyst now working for the Battelle Institute in Geneva. "There is no use in wringing hands. We can and must try to do what is humanly possible, and we must act soon." Even the club members were startled by the computer's findings but were unable to raise any important objections to them. The study is now being polished and refined by Potomac Associates, a public policy "think tank" in Washington that will publish The Limits to Growth in March. After translating it into a dozen languages, the Club of Rome will use its influence to place Limits in the right hands, where its message may influence policy and stir public debate.
One glaring weakness nonetheless remains in the report. It lacks a description of how a society dedicated to upward and onward growth can change its ways. Dennis Meadows, thoroughly aware of the problem, is trying to raise funds for a computer study of the possibilities. To date, he has had little success. Why? Mainly because Americans still tend to believe that continual growth is the solution to all problems.
The Club of Rome is not alone in its concern. Last week Britain's Ecologist magazine devoted 22 pages to a "Blueprint for Survival" that also projects disaster and argues for quick action to end exponential growth. The article gains its authority not from computer studies but from the endorsement of 33 of the U.K.'s most distinguished scientists, including Biologist Sir Julian Huxley, Geneticist C.H. Waddington and Naturalist Peter Scott. Unrestricted industrial and population expansion, they warn, must lead to "the breakdown of society and of the life support systems on this planet—possibly by the end of this century and certainly within the lifetime of our children."
Why has this dangerous trend not received wider attention? "Governments," reported the article, "are either refusing to face the relevant facts or are briefing their scientists in such a way that the seriousness is played down." As a result, "we may muddle our way to extinction."
Rather than wait, the scientists suggest urgent efforts to encourage a steady or declining population and heavy new taxes on raw materials. The taxes would penalize industries that consume great amounts of non-renewable natural resources and favor those that are labor intensive, thus keeping employment levels high. Another new tax would be based on the life of industrial products. A consumer buying a machine-made product that lasts one year would pay a 100% tax on it, while a product built to last 100 years would be taxfree. Stiff as such measures may seem now, the Ecologist says, they will avoid imposing infinitely greater hardships on future generations of British citizens.