The world in

Jørgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome report, discusses his projections for the next 40 years of life on this planet

The publication of The Limits to Growth in, sponsored by the Club of Rome, sparked a heated debate. With four decades of data to support his assertions, Jørgen Randers now sees the findings he published with Dennis and Donnella Meadows confirmed.

“Recent work has examined which of the scenarios best resembles the actual development from to and the conclusion is that it is essentially the resource crisis,” Randers told PROJECT M. “In that scenario, overshoot-collapse occurs somewhere between and, so it’s still ahead of us. The important thing about Limits to Growth is that it made the point that the world is so small, that humanity cannot plan to increase population and activity on this little planet forever.”

At age 67, Randers, professor of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School, remains curious. His current work, , is a description of what he thinks will happen over the next 40 years. “It resembles the pollution crisis scenario from Limits to Growth, a situation where humanity grows, GDP grows and resources are sufficient to handle growth, but emissions of greenhouse gases are so large that we reach plus two degrees centigrade in warming by. By, we move to three degrees centigrade, which means self-reinforcing climate change and climate crisis are a possibility in the second half of this century.”

Randers wrote in “to convince people that their short-term nature should be compensated for by institutional frameworks that would reduce it. The personal action is that I’ve spent 40 years trying to work for sustainable development with very little success. Now I’m 67 and wanted to know if I should continue worrying about the future, to work out if something will go terribly wrong during the last 20 years of my life. I’ve reached the conclusion that it will not for my socioeconomic group, although most of the things I value have already been destroyed: untouched nature, wide open spaces and uncrowded environments.”

As corporate policy, Randers, who also sits on the sustainability council of the Dow Chemical Company, suggests “to shift activity in a climate friendly direction as much as possible without incurring huge costs.”

WORK TO CHANGE LEGISLATION

Next comes the question whether a company should do more than that. “If the owner is willing to sacrifice short-term profit in order for the firm to contribute to the solution of the world’s future, fine, but in most cases he is not and consequently there is nothing you can do, except start an educational program for your owner to try to make the owner change his mind. For any institutional investor this is, of course, impossible because they are owned by thousands or millions of people. So, essentially you don’t get anywhere as long as you operate within the rules of the capitalist system and democracy. The only thing you can do, and this is what I advise my ‘multinational friends’ to do, is to work to change legislation.”

But the grey haired professor also finds grounds for optimism. “I think the world is highly unsustainable in the sense that we cannot continue to behave in the way we currently behave for generations without a problem. I forecast that humanity will respond strongly enough to avoid resource problems, water problems, food problems over the next 40 years, but we will not respond strongly enough to avoid the climate problem. Consequently, our grandchildren will live in a world with a highly damaged climate.”

The world in

Jørgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome report, discusses his projections for the next 40 years of life on this planet

The world in

Jørgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome report, discusses his projections for the next 40 years of life on this planet

“The Economist’s” magical wand

Who wants to be the messenger?

Back to which future?

Helping turn less into more