ABSTRACT
Both Forrester in World Dynamics and Meadows and his team in The Limits to Growth refrain from offering any recommendations as to how to accomplish this slowing down and eventual halting of population growth and increase in per-capita consumption of irreplaceable resources and further industrialization. Even if one considers their warning of impending doom somewhat exaggerated, as most critics do, there is no denying that much more serious concern about the issues so raised is in place than was the case before The Limits to Growth set in action this worldwide discussion. Malthus himself gave no concrete or even nearly concrete answers but stayed with generalities because he saw as his task not to compute limits but to explain general problem of increase in numbers and what “Nature” was doing about it. Annual growth rates from 1650 on are taken from David Heer, who in turn took his figures from Carr-Saunders and from the United Nations Statistical Yearbook for 1965.
