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What the Future

May Bring

W I N T E R 2 0 1 3 V O L . 5 4 N O . 2

R E P R I N T N U M B E R 5 4 2 0 7

Intelligence

A review of Jorgen Randers new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for

the Next Forty Years, written by John Sterman.

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WINTER 2013

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[BOOK REVIEW]

What the Future May BringIn his latest book, sustainable development expert Jorgen Randers offers an analysisof what the world will be like in the year 2052. Its not a pretty picture.BY JOHN STERMAN

Many authors writing about the future dismiss doubts and con-

trary opinions, striving with provocative titles such as The End of

History and the Last Man (by Francis Fukuyama) or The Singularity

Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology(by Ray Kurzweil) to per-

suade readers that the future they envision is not only plausible butinevitable. Thankfully, Jorgen Randers foregoes this temptation in

his new book,2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (White

River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012).

Randers, an expert on business and sustainable development

and currently a professor of climate strategy at BI Norwegian

Business School, offers a nuanced analysis of the state of the world

today and a forecast for global development for the coming de-

cades. Its not a pretty picture. Writing in the first person, Randers

is not shy about discussing his worries about the resource, envi-

ronmental and societal challenges the world faces. I have lived my

whole adult life worrying about the future, Randers admits. His

candor and expertise, gained over decades of work in sustainable

development for businesses and governments, yield a book well

worth reading and discussing with colleagues, friends and family.

In an interesting twist, Randers invited other experts to share

their thoughts on the world of 2052. Their views on topics includ-

ing population, food, energy, urbanization, culture, the future of

capitalism and the role of spirituality are presented throughout

the book as Glimpses. Randers also invites readers to participate:

Through an associated website, www.2052.info, he provides his

models for you to examine and modify.

So what does Randers expect the world of 2052 to be like? First,

some background. In 1972, Randers, then a doctoral student at MIT,was one of the authors, along with William W. Behrens III, Dennis L.

Meadows and the late Donella H. Meadows, of the groundbreaking

bookThe Limits to Growth. Drawing on system dynamics work

pioneered by Jay W. Forrester, Randers and his coauthors developed

a simulation model that integrated population, economic activity,

resources and the environment and then used it to examine future

scenarios. The results suggested (1) that business as usual would

most likely result in the collapse of the global economy and human

population before 2100, (2) that there were ways to avoid that

outcome and create a sustainable society, and (3) the sooner socie

committed to a sustainable path, the more likely we would succee

The Limits to Growth, commissioned by the Club of Rome, an inte

national think tank, was an international bestseller and becam

both enormously influential and controversial. (Disclosure: I stu

ied under Dennis and Donella Meadows as an undergraduate

Dartmouth College, currently direct the MIT System Dynami

Group and have known Randers for more than 30 years.)

The debate continues 40 years later. Some people point to th

tremendous growth in technology, increasing wealth and the ri

of China and other emerging economies to argue that hunger an

poverty will soon be a memor y. Others argue that this much

needed progress has come through the unsustainable exploitatioand degradation of the resources and ecosystems upon which

species, including ours, depend.

A sustainable society cannot consume renewable resources fast

than they regenerate, cannot spew wastes into the environment fast

than they break down and are rendered harmless and, in the lon

run, cannot rely on nonrenewable resources at all. But humanity vi

lates all these basic laws of physics. Today, we are overwhelming

dependent on nonrenewable resources, especially fossil fuels. T

resulting greenhouse gas emissions are (Continued on page 1

Randers predictsthat the climatewill continue tochange, leadingto more extremeweather eventsand floods.

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rapidly changing the climate. Tropical forests continue to fall for fire-

wood and farms. We have already overshot the limits. As Randers

points out, by 2010 humanitys global ecological footprint reached

about 1.4 times the carrying capacity of the earth we need 1.4planets to sustain the current population and economy. That deficit

is financed by unsustainable depletion of natural capital. Like a fiscal

deficit, the party cannot go on forever. Unlike a financial crisis, nature

does not do bailouts.

More troubling, our ecological footprint is growing. World pop-

ulation has increased from less than 4 billion in 1972, when The

Limits to Growth was published, to more than 7 billion today. The

United Nations forecasts population will exceed 9 billion by 2050.

Randers instead expects population will peak before 2052, much

earlier than most people expect, at about 8.1 billion, an outcome

premised on optimistic assumptions about future fertility rates.Families will increasingly be able to have exactly the

number of children they want because of steady

improvements in education, health and contracep-

tion, he writes. Urbanization will speed the fertility

decline: Negative practical experience from a

crowded urban environment will win over old reli-

gious teachings that evolved when humanity was still

puny and toiling on the land, he writes.

Although population growth remains important,

Randers correctly points out that environmental deg-

radation is powerfully driven by increasing impact

per person. Real economic output has been growing

at an average rate of around 3.5% per year worldwide far faster

than population and far faster in emerging economies. Billions of

people in the worlds poorest nations legitimately seek the food,

clean water, housing, health care, electricity and opportunities we

take for granted. They aspire to the cars, air conditioners, flat-screen

TVs, jet travel and consumption the Western lifestyle entails, while

we in the developed world want even more than we have now. As the

West pursues more while China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and other

developing nations become more affluent, our already unsustain-

able ecological footprint will grow further, setting the stage for a

harder, deeper and less predictable decline.Many argue that free markets and technology will save the day.

Randers celebrates the power of markets and innovations that

are, for example, making wind and solar power competitive with

energy from fossil fuels. But he also recognizes the long

delays in the system. It takes decades to replace unsustainable

capital stocks and infrastructure and to commercialize new tech-

nologies not to mention the long lifetimes of atmospheric

greenhouse gases. Moreover, Randers recognizes that market fail-

ures and politics further delay or prevent action. Many resources,

from open-access fisheries to the climate, are subject to the trag-

edy of the commons, in which overexploitation is the result of

rational behavior by individuals, businesses and nations. Over-

coming the tragedy is possible, though solutions have so farproven elusive for critical issues such as climate change.

In reflecting on the years since the initial publication ofThe Limits

to Growth, Randers discusses the consequences of the delays, market

failures, political expediencies, disinformation campaigns by vested

interests and other forces that have prevented the world from pursu-

ing sustainable development. With sadness, he concludes that we will

continue stumbling down that path, responding mostly reactively,

mostly parochially and mostly too late. As a result, the climate will

continue to change, sea levels will continue to rise and resource con-

flicts will intensify, all of which will cause an increasing drag on the

economy. Although per capita income will continue to grow for awhile, particularly in the developing world, Randers

expects growth in the developed world, including the

United States, to stagnate as companies increasingly

move jobs and capital to lower-cost regions, the aging

population worsens fiscal stress and environmental

challenges become more acute.

Readers may be disturbed by Randers conclusion

that democracies are ill-suited to address pressing

global problems, and that authoritarian govern-

ments such as that of China may be better able to act

for the long term and respond faster to emerging

threats. Some readers may think that Randers has too

rosy a view of authoritarians as benevolent despots. If thats the case,

he counters, the outlook for the world is even darker.

As Randers explains, My forecast of global developments to

2052 is actually quite gloomy. Not catastrophic. But, he notes, the

worst consequences of delay and policy failure will manifest only

later; around 2052, the average per capita consumption level will

peak and a worldwide decline in material standards will start.

But it neednt be: Overshoot and collapse is solvable at least in

principle. But it is hard to solve in practice, because forward-looking

policy normally requires sacrifice today to get a better tomorrow.

Although he expects that we will not rise to the challenge, he hopesthat we will. His concluding words: Please help make my forecast

wrong. Together we could create a much better world.

John Stermanis the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at

MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the MIT System

Dynamics Group. Comment on this article at http://sloanreview.mit.

edu/x/54207, or contact the author at smrfeedback@mit.edu.

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