I read this article back on Monday 1 September 2014 when it was first published. I didn't choose to submit here to Hacker News, as now has been kindly done, because I noted that most of the graphs of trends in the articles show that the confirmed trends are favorable trends (death rates down, birth rates down, population growth rates down, food per capita up, and so on) while the predicted unfavorable trends are still off in the unknown future. My personal prediction: Julian Simon, Matt Ridley, and a host of more optimistic projectors of trends will be more accurate in predicting further technological progress, further improvement of well being of most people in most places around the world, and sufficient natural resources (used more effectively with improved technology) to bring about rising prosperity in per-capita terms for the world as a whole and especially for the poorest parts of the world as we know the world today. Responses to the earlier MIT follow-up study[1] and the current University of Melbourne follow-up study[2] may not be definitive either (we are talking about the future, after all), but they have higher plausiblity for me as someone who has grown up with a lot of predictions of gloom and doom since the 1950s that have turned out to be wrong.<p>[1] <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/18/the-limits-to-growth-40-year-update" rel="nofollow">http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/18/the-limits-to-growth-4...</a><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/09/the-club-of-romes-limits-to-growth-updated-entirely-bizarre/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/09/the-club-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/energy-environment/yes-the-club-of-rome-and-limits-to-growth-is-still-piffle-why-do-you-ask/" rel="nofollow">http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/energy-environment/yes-the-clu...</a>
The graphs don't seem to back up the text. Industrial output and pollution are well below the predicted value, and the death rate is far lower. "Resources" (whatever that means) is way higher than predicted, and food and services per capita are up.
If the Earth was a closed system it could be indetified as having finite resources. Unfortunately for the authors of the story, that basic premise is false. ET solar radiation is 1367 watts per square meter [1]. Added to that the (current) high interest in space exploration/exploitation and I think we can put this theory to bed.<p>[1]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight</a>