Chapter 3 - Limits to Growth

Question 1

Describe a possible feedback loop that related the poverty to population growth.

Answer 1

In many countries an increase in population causes an increase in poverty which then due to lack of education or access to contraception, it causes more pregnancies which leads to further population rise.

Question 2

What happens if feedback loops are managed unsustainably?

Answer 2

Unsustainably managed/unbalanced feedback loops causes overshoots which leads to a risk of collpase of irreversible change to the environment.

Question 3

What is an overshoot and what are some real-world symptoms of them?

Answer 3

Whenm the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceeds its regenerative capacity.

Examples include risings sea levels, financial gap between rich and poor widening, declining GDP in many countries.

Question 4

Name some ways to live within enviromental limits and prevent overshoots.

Answer 4

1. Extend the planning horizon - we need to look further into the future to see potential impacts of projects.
2. Improve signals that a feedback loop is unbalanced.
3. Speed up response times to unbalanced feedback loops from indicators and do something quickly like policy development.
4. Minimise the use of finite resources.
5. Prevent the erosion of renewable resources and give them time to regenerate.
6. Use resoruces with maximum efficiency and keep them in the product lifecycle system for as long as possible.
7. Stop exponential growth of population.

Question 5

Comment on the reliance on technology and markets to prevent global overshoot.

Answer 5

Technology and markets are unlikely to prevent a global overshoot if they are merely tools to serve the goals of society as a whole. If society’s implicit goals are to exploit nature, enrich elites and ignore the long-term, technology and markets will simply serve that.