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Lecture

The Limits to Growth: Global Challenges and Scenarios

In course

AR-154: Environmental history and theories I

Le cours vise a familiariser les etudiants avec l'histoire de l'environnement et des paysages, et avec la maniere dont les preoccupations environnementales amenent a repenser aujourd'hui le sens et les principes de l'architecture et des disciplines de pr ...

Description

This lecture discusses the environmental challenges highlighted in 'The Limits to Growth' report, focusing on population growth, resource depletion, ecological footprints, and potential future scenarios like techno-explosion, techno-stability, energy descent, and collapse. It explores the impact of human activities on the planet's ecosystems and presents contrasting visions for the future, from continuous growth to sustainable societies and potential collapse scenarios.

Instructor

Sébastien Jacques Marie Marot

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Population growth

Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.9 billion in 2020. The UN projected population to keep growing, and estimates have put the total population at 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8 billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.

Environmental issues

Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation, and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on the individual, organizational or governmental levels, for the benefit of both the environment and humans.

World population

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded eight billion in mid-November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the human population to reach one billion and only 219 years more to reach 8 billion. The human population has experienced continuous growth following the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the end of the Black Death in 1350, when it was nearly 370,000,000.

Resource depletion

Resource depletion is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. Natural resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources (see also mineral resource classification). Use of either of these forms of resources beyond their rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion. The value of a resource is a direct result of its availability in nature and the cost of extracting the resource, the more a resource is depleted the more the value of the resource increases.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long time. Specific definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Experts often describe sustainability as having three dimensions (or pillars): environmental, economic, and social, and many publications emphasize the environmental dimension. In everyday use, sustainability often focuses on countering major environmental problems, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution.

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