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[Korbac]

As long as nukes don't blow everyone up, I am relatively O.K. with total economic collapse.

Did I mention I have a crippling fear of a nuke just suddenly blowing me up without me being able to do anything about it? 

[Svarte Troner]

Yeah, other than some/most of the people you know starving to death and a rise in militancy culminating in mini 1984-esque police states fighting over dwindling natural resources, I wouldn't really mind living in the dystopian future we're all headed for. On the bright side, I've got 20 years to brush up on my survival skills and plenty of time to look for a sparsely populated tract of land somewhere in northern Canada. 

[lemon10]

Tip on finding a remote spot in Canada: Go to northern Canada. 
(Well not really, but close enough).

[Digital Hellhound]

Look on the bright side; by 2100, we'll have next to no pollution again!

[Lightning4]

That graph doesn't really look like an end of the world scenario to me. Just means we'll be going back to about 1900s level.

Bring on the zeppelins and steam trains, I say!

[Kamin]

Population will go down after some arbitrarily chosen time for an economic collapse? Although I am aware that the collapse is predicted based off of the trends taken note of in history, many new discoveries have since rocked the study of Economics. Most theories of economic behavior used in '72 have become no more than a heap of heuristics used to provide econ students reasons for why such theories are outdated. If there is a massive world failure on the scale predicted, I'll tell you this: Population will drop at first. But then it will spike right back up. And hard.

Human beings invest more time and care into their young than many other animals (speaking of heuristics, here comes the r/K selection theory... Human beings tend to be factored as 'K's). This means that as the survival rate goes up, childbirth goes down. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates both figure into that--we can see a lot of evidence of this in declining and aging populations. Overpopulation is, essentially, a myth; this is asserted quite remarkably by the Demographic-economic paradox. What does this mean in the context of the study? It means when the population declines, it just surges back harder. This is especially true after huge disasters because life expectancy and infant mortality rates both take a huge hit. When these rates are adversely affected, levels of reproduction naturally increase to bridge the gap. Does this mean, though, that we aren't burning through natural resources like madmen? Nope. Because we are. I just thank God that people are starting to realize it; the more people know and understand, the better off we'll all be. Regardless, as unfortunate as it may sound to some of you, consumer whorism is going to have to stop existing on the grand scale it does today. I welcome it, personally.

[LordBucket]

That's a graph representing the predictions of an MIT study from 1972, plotted against actual data.

...so, if I read that correctly we have more resources remaining then predicted, more food per capita than predicted, more services per capita than predicted, less industrial output than predicted, less pollution than predicted, and about the same population as predicted.

What exactly is the problem here?

[kaijyuu]

We've delayed the collapse by like, 15 years? Probably. Ish.

Maybe once the non-renewable resources have ~10 years left, it'll enter people's short sighted view and something will be done to avert catastrophe. Maybe.

[Guardian G.I.]

There is a (temporary) solution for the resource problem.
If we severely curtail American rampant consumerism, we would have enough resources for the upcoming century or two (or maybe even more).
This requires a brutal foreign military occupation, though! 

[Loud Whispers]

There is a (temporary) solution for the resource problem.
If we severely curtail American rampant consumerism, we would have enough resources for the upcoming century or two (or maybe even more).
This requires a brutal foreign military occupation, though! 

War fixes everything!
_{If you survive...}

[Karlito]

It's always extremely troubling to see a graph without a labeled axis.

[mainiac]

This study doesn't predict the end of the world.  It predicts the end of the world if we do not change our economic behavior.  But we are changing and will change more quickly in the future.

[Reelya]

The 1972 "Limits of Growth" equations were proven to be heavily faulty. I remembe reading once that they can be extrapolated backwards as well as forwards, and there is an asymptote in about 1880 where the world population is infinite.

While the "concerns" may be valid, the maths is not.

Note, the graph was based on trends which were already established before 1970, and when you look at it like that, it's predictions are WAY out. Food per capita has grown a lot faster than predicted, non-renewable resources have depleted slower. Pollution has grown less in actuality than predicted (though global warming may offset that).

If something was "going up" or "going down" before it's not genius to predict those trends will continue, unless you accurately predict how much they will go up or down.

I'm interested what data they use to predict total food production worldwide will halve at the exact moment that global populations stabilize. Also, no mention of renewable resources. As food or mineral prices rise, that will make alternate foods, energy and recycling economically viable. No mention of this.

[Muz]

Plus inventions.

I bet it didn't factor in the effect of computers and internet, the open source movement, Wikipedia, which is just massively increasing our education and productivity. Or things like Facebook and Cracked which is massively reducing it. Or some of the more modern cheap inventions designed to counter global warming and stuff. Or some recent natural gas tech that made it really cheap to utilize. Or all the tons of new resources found.

[Megaman]

I'm always suspicious of 'THE WOOORRLLDD WIIILL EEENNNDDDDDDDD' charts like these. This is assuming that the world stays exactly the same for several years and... why the hell isn't the Y axis labeled? Yeah, these guys are crazy banana priests in the middle of Brazil who throws coconuts at tourists.