What will the world look like in 2052?

Deborah MacKenzie, consultant

Forty years ago this spring, three idealistic young computer modellers wrote The Limits to Growth, a book that detailed the first effort to use computers to project possible global futures. And what a projection. Dennis and Dana Meadows and J?rgen Randers created mathematical models of how global population, food, health, industry and resources affected each other, and then extrapolated to see what would happen if booming economic and population growth continued.

The result shocked them: the simulated society collapsed. No technological fix short of abandoning material growth could save repeated simulations from overshooting resource limits and plunging into megadeath and poverty. Partly as a result, the book was met with overwhelming, and largely ideological, derision - but, as I discovered on delving into its history earlier this year, it has never been disproved. Rather the opposite.

This is partly because Limits to Growth was not strictly a forecast, but rather a warning of the kinds of things that can go wrong when you have finite resources and social systems that are slow to react; by the time people realise they are running out of fish, or soil, or a stable climate, it is often too late to change fast enough to save what?s left of that resource. The idea of the book was to get the world to stop in time.

Few listened, and in forty years Randers has turned from the idealist who thought the book would change things, to a grumpy grandfather wondering what kind of world will result instead.

In this follow-up book, 2052: A global forecast for the next 40 years Randers makes predictions based on current data, simpler calculations and a lifetime?s experience analysing global systems.

Interestingly - and plausibly - he doesn?t anticipate global apocalypse, but instead a slow, sad decline, in which pockets of collapse and misery develop while business largely as usual carries on around them. Overall he sees a poorer, less democratic world as resources run out and more must be spent simply to keep overstretched systems running - echoes of other theorists of collapse such as Joseph Tainter.

In Randers forecast, we don?t just muddle on into the future, though. ?Irritatingly?, he sighs, few adopt the cheap solutions that could keep climate from unleashing all hell after 2052. Over that, he draws a regretful curtain.

Just another prophet of doom? Well, no - a uniquely well-qualified one. And he is not alone. In a fascinating assemblage of current, authoritative thinking on all these issues, the book includes ?glimpses? from 34 top experts in everything from energy to the Arctic. In these short, thoughtful essays they outline what they feel is likely on their patch. Not only do they make this book a very wide-ranging and up-to-date snapshot of these issues, they also make it all easier to take in and digest.

Of course, like any good grandfather, Randers has advice. Once again he can?t resist telling the world what it should do to prevent the worst. And failing that, as he seems resigned to accept as inevitable, he also suggests 18 things you can do all by yourself to ride out the coming storms. Some - teaching your children Chinese, but not to love the wilderness, avoiding investments vulnerable to social unrest and maybe moving somewhere climate-proof - show his cynicism. But there are also prescriptions for trying to make a difference, if only for an easier conscience.

His final plea, though, shows that some of his 1972 idealism still lingers. ?Please help make my forecast wrong. Together we could create a much better world.? Still trying, after all these years.

2052: A global forecast for the next 40 years
by J?rgen Randers
Chelsea Green Publishing
$34.95

Follow @CultureLabNS on Twitter

Like us on Facebook

Read more CultureLab book reviews.

madison bumgarner wnba draft tax day april 17 boston marathon tu pac hologram shuttle