SPARK Lecture at IUCAA in Pune. Can perpetual growth be created in a closed system? Can technology, politics or markets make perpetual growth happen? What happens when growth is unconstrained? Can growth be uneconomic? Is the pursuit of growth as an end the sign of a purposeless society?

1. The idea of Growth
Anupam Saraph, PhD
Future Designer and Professor of Systems and Decision Sciences
Dedicated to Nicholas Goergescu Roegen, Malcolm Slesser and
all those anonymous humans striving to improve the pulse of the world

2. The growth game
• Every jump is a unit of revenue
• Every time I say start, you will jump till I
say stop
• Every time I say stop, note the units you
got since the last start; calculate the
growth rate in your revenues

3. The growth game
• Why did you peak off?
• Why did your growth rate go to zero or
even negative?

4. The growth game
• Innovate to continue growth
• When you are ready we will try your
new growth strategy

5. The growth game
• What was the maximum achievable
growth in both scenarios?
• What was the global growth in both
scenarios?

6. revenue
revenue
target
desired
growth
rate
resources(+) (-)
carrying capacity

7. 100 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Time
YAxis
Resources
Population
Carrying Capacity
Deficit
Overshoot and Collapse
Revenue

8. Growth with doubled resources

9. Slower growth rates

10. The Resource Consumption Scenario
 Some resources like water are becoming fast inaccessible and
inadequate.
 Some resources like oil have gone past their peak production.
 There is an energy shortfall of 17 - 20 TW.
 Building 1 1000 MW nuclear plant/day for 50 years would give
10 TW, Wind offers 2-4 TW , Solar offers 20, Biomass has 7-10
theoretical maximum.
 In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
estimated that 75 percent of the world’s oceanic fisheries were
fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery,
fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed, and
the species may have been pushed to biological extinction.

14.  Growth is an increase in some quantity over time.
 Growth is not Development. Development is to become
more mature, elaborate.
 Growth by itself does not sustain that which grows, in fact
it can destroy it.
 Growth is by itself neither good nor bad. It depends on
what is growing and when. Nothing grows forever.
 Not all growth is economic.
 Uncontrolled growth uneconomic; it is often called cancer.
 The dynamics of uncontrolled growth eventually results in
an overshoot and then a collapse.
Growth

15. When the costs of growth exceed the benefits of growth, growth is
uneconomic.
Uneconomic growth
Depletes a resource that is more expensive than the revenue earned or
that generates more harm than the revenue earned.
Erodes the carrying capacity.
Can continue by parasitic resource use.
Uneconomic growth

16. The Pollution Scenario
 Some pollutants like carbon di-oxide have not be reduced by
technology, political or market solutions over the last 20 years.
 Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers
are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is
decreasing in summer.
 The first global assessment of soil loss, based on studies of
hundreds of experts, found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion
acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.

17. CO2 Concentration

18. To overshoot means to go too far, to grow so large so quickly that limits
are exceeded. When an overshoot occurs, it induces stresses that begin
to slow and stop growth.
The cause for overshoot and collapse are always the same
First, there is growth, acceleration, rapid change.
Second, the growth drives a depletion of some resource required for
the growth or an increase in some resource that harms the growth.
Third this dynamics causes a contraction, deceleration or decay
resulting in a collapse.
Overshoot and collapse

20. We Live in an Growth Era
Source: Alan Atkisson and Junko Edahiro, Life Beyond Growth, ISIS Academy 2012

21. “The closed economy of the future
might similarly be called the 'spaceman'
economy, in which the earth has
become a single spaceship, without
unlimited reservoirs of anything, either
for extraction or for pollution, and in
which, therefore, man must find his
place in a cyclical ecological system”
- Kenneth Boulding
1879: Henry George, Progress and
Poverty
1965, Adlai Stevenson in the UN
1966, Barbara Ward, Spaceship Earth
1966, Kenneth Boulding, The
Economics of the Coming Spaceship
Earth
1968, Buckminister Fuller, Operating
Manual for Spaceship Earth
1971, U. Thant in the UN
Spaceship Earth

22. In a closed system
•Resources and the carrying capacity are finite.
•Perpetual growth is impossible.
•Uneconomic growth is inevitable.
•Unless regulated an overshoot and collapse is the likely scenario.
Growth on Spaceship Earth

23. Nicholas Georgescu
Roegen
Was a mathematician and economist.
He was possibly the first to point out that
growth cannot violate the laws of
thermodynamics.
All growth requires energy.

24. Malcolm Slesser
Was a professor, energy analyst and
energy economist.
He highlighted that the rate of growth of
the global economy was about 2% per
anum and has historically never
exceeded that. He developed tools to
compute the dynamics of growth of
national economies and to explore ways
to increase their carrying capacity.
The maximum rate of growth of the
economy cannot exceed the rate at
which energy is pumped into the
economy.

25. Donella Meadows
was a systems analyst and adjunct
professor of Environmental Studies at
Dartmouth College. She was the lead
author bringing the insight of limits to
growth from the study for the Club of Rome
to the world.
Dennis Meadows
has served on the faculties and directed research
centers at MIT, Dartmouth College, and the
University of New Hampshire. He is President of
the Laboratory for Interactive Learning. Has
revisited the study in 1992 and 2002 to confirm
the findings documented in the 1972 book on
limits to growth.
Jay Forrester
Professor Emeritus at MIT, led the team of
researchers who developed the World model for
the Club of Rome to explore the dynamics of
growth in a finite world.

26. Technology cannot yield perpetual growth
 Energy expansion has been no more than 2% per anum.
 World GDP has also matched the energy growth.
 Technology requires energy. Rapid replacement of existing
capital with alternate energy or energy efficient capital drives
limited energy away from other requirements of the economy,
limiting the rate at which this is practicable.
 GDP Growth rates of various countries reflect their ability to
control resources (through wars, ownership or trade) and
(failure to) offset the impact of pollution.
 Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for
more than a decade during the period 1990–2001.

27. Energy production refers to forms of primary energy--petroleum (crude oil, natural gas liquids, and oil
from nonconventional sources), natural gas, solid fuels (coal, lignite, and other derived fuels),
and combustible renewables and waste--and primary electricity, all converted into oil equivalents.
International Energy Agency (IEA Statistics © OECD/IEA, http://www.iea.org/stats/index.asp).
Energy production (kt of oil equivalent)

28. GDP at purchaser's prices is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy
plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated
without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of
natural resources. Data are in constant 2000 U.S. dollars. Dollar figures for GDP are converted from
domestic currencies using 2000 official exchange rates. For a few countries where the official
exchange rate does not reflect the rate effectively applied to actual foreign exchange transactions,
an alternative conversion factor is used.
World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.
GDP (constant 2000 US$)

29. GDP Growth 2000-2010
Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local
currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2000 U.S. dollars. GDP is the sum of
gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and
minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without
making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation
of natural resources.
World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.

31. Energy use, (kt of oil equivalent)
Energy use refers to use of primary energy before transformation to other end-use fuels, which is equal to indigenous
production plus imports and stock changes, minus exports and fuel supplied to ships and aircraft engaged in international
transport.

32. Energy imports, net (% of energy use)
Net energy imports are estimated as energy use less production, both measured in oil equivalents. A negative value
indicates that the country is a net exporter. Energy use refers to use of primary energy before transformation to other end-
use fuels, which is equal to indigenous production plus imports and stock changes, minus exports and fuels supplied to
ships and aircraft engaged in international transport.

33. Politics and Markets do not create perpetual growth
 Failure to build informational, social, and institutional
mechanisms to keep in check the positive feedback loops that
cause exponential population.
 Mounting debt and paper “wealth” drive politics and markets.
 The richest one- fifth of the world’s population has 85 percent
of the global GNP. In 1998 more than 45 percent of the globe’s
people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. And
the gap between rich and poor is widening.

35.  Deterioration in renewable resources - surface and ground water,
forests, fisheries, agricultural land.
 Rising levels of pollution.
 Growing demands for capital, resources, and labor by military
and industry to secure, process, and defend resources.
 Investment in human resources (education, shelter, health care)
postponed in order to provide immediate consumption and
security demands.
 Rising debt; eroding goals for health and environment.
 Growing instability in natural ecosystems.
 Growing gap between rich and poor - between the powerful and
the weak.
Meadows, et. al. pp 176-177.
Some Indicators of Overshoot

36. Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.
Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the
environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our
current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for
human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter
the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that
we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our
present course will bring about.
World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity signed by more than 1,600
scientists, including 102 Nobel laureates, from 70 countries, 1992
Some Indicators of Overshoot

37. The idea of growth
 Growth in a closed system is not perpetual
 Technology, markets or politics cannot create perpetual growth
 Growth has overshot the carrying capacity when it becomes
uneconomic
 Growth as an end is the pursuit of a purposeless society