The limits of growth

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The Limits to Growth (Original title: English The Limits to Growth ) is a 1972 at the St. Gallen Symposium presented study on the future of the world economy . The starting point of the study was to show that the current individual local actions of all have global effects, which however do not correspond to the time horizon and scope of action of the individual.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was commissioned by the Club of Rome with this study, which was put up for discussion in 1971 at two international conferences (including the St. Gallen Symposium ). It was published with the subtitle “Report of the Club of Rome on the State of Humanity” and was financed by the Volkswagen Foundation with one million DM at the time . Donella and Dennis Meadows and their staff at the Jay Wright Forresters Institute for System Dynamics carried out a system analysis and computer simulations of various scenarios.

The used world model was investigating five trends with global effect: industrialization , population growth , malnutrition , exploitation of raw material reserves and destruction of habitat . For example, scenarios were calculated with different levels of raw material stocks on earth, or different levels of efficiency in agricultural production, birth control or environmental protection were assumed.

Awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 1973 to the Club of Rome in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt . V. l. to r .: Ernst Klett , Aurelio Peccei , Eduard Pestel (both members of the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome )

To date, this book has sold over 30 million copies in 30 languages. In 1973 the Club of Rome was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for this.

First edition & further editions

1972: results of the original publication

Standard run of the world model from 1972
One of the possible stabilizations of the world model from 1972 ("Stabilized World Model II")

The main conclusions of the report were:

"If the current growth in world population , industrialization , environmental pollution , food production and the exploitation of natural resources continues unchanged, the absolute limits of growth on earth will be reached over the next hundred years."

- Conclusion from: The limits of growth
The project team
Dennis Meadows (USA)
Alison A. Anderson (USA)
Ilyas Bayar (Turkey)
Farhad Hakimzadeh (Iran)
Judith A. Make (USA)
Donella Meadows (USA)
Nirmala S. Murthy (India)
Jørgen Randers (Norway)
John A. Seeger (USA)
Erich Zahn (Germany)
Jay M. Anderson (USA)
William W. Behrens III (USA)
Steffen Harbordt (Germany)
Peter Milling (Germany)
Roger F. Naill (USA)
Stephen Schantzis (USA)
Marilyn Williams (USA)

Reaching the limits of growth could lead to a fairly rapid and unstoppable decline in population and industrial capacity if it were to irreparably destroy the environment or use up most of the raw materials. A change in the conditions for growth in order to bring about an ecological and economic equilibrium , which is to be maintained in the future, seemed possible. The sooner mankind decides to establish this state of equilibrium, and the sooner it begins, the greater the chances of achieving it. With regard to possible solution strategies it says:

“Our current situation is so complicated and so much the result of diverse human endeavors that no combination of purely technical , economic or legal measures can bring about any significant improvement. Completely new approaches are required to align humanity with goals that lead to states of equilibrium instead of further growth. They require an exceptional level of understanding, imagination, and political and moral courage. We believe, however, that these efforts can be made, and hope that this publication will help to mobilize the necessary forces. "

- Conclusion from: The limits of growth

Worldwide measures and international cooperation are absolutely necessary for this. The difficulties of " Copernican proportions" are clearly pointed out. However, the authors also express their hope that humanity will still be able to make these decisions in order to ensure their survival and a “good material standard of living ” in the form of a state of equilibrium.

The collapse scenarios were justified - among other things - with the dynamics of exponential growth . The first part of the report describes the mathematics of exponential growth in great detail and in a generally understandable manner. In the case of the world's population, there was a doubling time of 250 years around 1650 . In 1970 the doubling time of the world population was only 33 years. The authors called such growth “ super exponential ”. The statements in the report on world population in 2000 can now be verified. This year, with six billion people, almost exactly as many people lived as were taken into account in the standard run of the world model.

The second essential effect in the scenarios was the introduction of control loops with which the various components of the world model influenced each other. For example, population growth is dependent on the birth and death rate . As long as the birth rate is higher than the death rate, the population will grow. If the death rate is higher, it will decrease. However, birth and death rates are dependent on medical care and food production. Food production and medical care, in turn, depend on industrial production as it impacts the provision of technology for agriculture and healthcare.

A special feature at the time was that the simulations were created with the help of computers . The then known data on the development of the world population, industrial production, environmental pollution, food production, raw material stocks and other data were fed into the computer model called World3 . World3 was written in the DYNAMO computer language. Back then, you needed mainframes to run the program. With the appearance of the 30-year update (see below in this article) in 2004, a CD was also released containing the World3 computer model - in the slightly modified version 03 - as a computer program. It runs on every PC , since PCs today far exceed the capabilities of the mainframe computers of that time.

The simulation results of most of the scenarios showed a further, initially inconspicuous population and economic growth up to a rather abrupt reversal of the trend before the year 2100. Only immediate and radical measures for environmental protection, for birth control, for the limitation of capital growth as well as technological measures changed this system behavior, so that scenarios could also be calculated under which the world population and prosperity could be kept constant in the long term. These technological measures included reusing waste, extending the useful life of capital goods and other types of capital goods, and actions to increase the long-term fertility of agricultural and forestry holdings. The authors had not only received disaster scenarios as a result, but also scenarios that led to a state of equilibrium.

Meadows, et al. dealt with the important technology question in great detail in a separate chapter. In this, among other things, a scenario is calculated in which the technology succeeds in reducing raw material consumption to zero through complete recycling . In a further scenario, “unlimited raw material stocks” and a massive reduction in environmental pollution through technology are taken into account. Finally, these models are supplemented by increased agricultural productivity and perfect birth control. It turned out that - according to the model concept - even maximum technology does not prevent a system collapse if the production capital continues to grow indefinitely, because even maximum technology can no longer compensate for the negative consequences:

"Technical solutions alone cannot lead us out of this diabolical control loop."

- Conclusion from: The limits of growth

In the models, population growth was initially a prerequisite for increasing economic output, since the population would have an impact on raw material production, food production, demanded services and industrial production. These economic-promoting aspects of population growth would turn into the opposite if a border were crossed, since capital depletion would then be greater than the investment rate. This would be the case, for example, if the cost of extracting raw materials continued to rise because the rich deposits would be exhausted and ever inferior stocks would have to be accessed. According to the results of the 1972 report, there could be no infinite population growth without at some point also impairing industrial capital.

The authors were aware that they created the scenarios partly on the basis of insufficient data, so model runs were carried out assuming the same reserves as well as reserves that were up to five times higher than was proven in 1972. In addition, there were different requirements for economic growth, but in most scenarios the raw material stocks were exhausted before the year 2100. In the report it was clearly stated that no predictions were made, but only "indications of the behavior patterns characteristic of the world system" were given.

Meadows, et al. The first study, as well as the politically induced oil crisis of 1973, triggered a rethink, especially in Western countries. This was followed by the development of new technologies, increased energy efficiency and “qualitative growth” with a stronger decoupling of economic growth, energy consumption and environmental pollution. In the Eastern Bloc states , such as the GDR , Meadow's theses were rejected by the government as "hostile-negative", but in view of considerable environmental problems, they were introduced and discussed in particular by the church's environmental movement and opposition.

Responses to the 1972 publication

Immediately after the publication, there were controversial reactions. Henry Wallich of Yale University described in an editorial (March 13, 1972) in Newsweek The Limits to Growth as irresponsible nonsense. Meadow's catastrophe scenarios would be used to propagate subjective visions of the future that are strongly influenced by political ideas.

Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn and later critics criticized the fading out of technical progress in a pure trend extrapolation . Simon and others consider population growth, as in the baby boom, a requirement, not an obstacle to economic progress. Allen Kneese and Ronald Riker criticized the inconsistent use of growth functions: while population, capital and pollution grow exponentially, only linear growth would be assumed - if at all - with appropriate technologies for better use of resources and reduced pollution. In this context, Meadows was also assumed to be a Neo-Malthusian approach.

From the beginning and up to the present it has often been criticized that the dry-up of individual raw materials at certain dates would still be predicted in the 20th century, and this claim is used to discredit the statements in the book in full. Whether Limits to Growth contains this false prediction is debatable. One possible view is that this is a misinterpretation: The study lists for raw materials three " indices " for the shortage, of which the critics one misinterpret as a range prognosis. The other view is that a drying up in the 20th century was actually implied or at least the possibility of confusion was accepted. An indication of this view is that the US government's environmental council is quoted without comment at the beginning of the section on non-regenerative raw materials with the following statement: "At the current rate of expansion [...] silver , zinc and uranium can still be used in this, even at very high prices Century will be scarce. ”On the other hand, the view that the critics misinterpret it is supported by the fact that

  • the entire text makes later collapse times and forecasts about raw material prices "in 100 years",
  • the figure used by the critics as a range forecast would assume that no more raw material deposits would be found after 1970, and
  • that the later editions of Limits to Growth present the point range forecast in a much more differentiated manner, but nothing changes in the basic statements of the book. In this respect, the discussion of the interpretation of the index numbers would be irrelevant because the other statements in the book are valid regardless of this.

In June 2008, Graham Turner of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) published a study in which he compared historical data for the years 1970-2000 with the scenarios in the original 1972 study. He found a great deal of agreement with the predictions of the standard scenario that will result in a global collapse in the middle of the 21st century. In 2014, he published an updated study in which he came to a similar conclusion: the world is changing largely as the business-as-usual scenario would.

expenditure

Analyzes & Suggestions 1972–2010

1992: The new frontiers to growth

1992 were New Limits to Growth published. New findings (for example, greater raw material deposits than known 20 years previously) and the developments that have occurred in the meantime have been included in the updated simulations, but the results tend to remain similar. As in the 1972 report, most scenarios end in "border crossing and collapse". However, a state of equilibrium could be achieved through birth control, production control, emission control technologies, erosion prevention and resource conservation. The later these measures are started, the lower the achievable material standard of living would be. A total of 13 scenarios were presented in the report, three of which lead to a state of equilibrium.

The simulations from 1992 were carried out against the background of an improved data situation compared to 1972. In 1972 the authors mentioned the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate , but were unable to overlook the consequences. In 1992 the man-made greenhouse effect could already be estimated much better. A separate chapter is devoted to the depletion of the ozone layer caused by CFCs . On the one hand, this describes the problem of border crossing by CFC emissions and, on the other hand, it also makes it clear that mankind is able to react to global problems and to pass international agreements to protect the ozone layer.

2004: The 30 year update

“Business as usual”: This model is based on technological advances in resource extraction and other deposits. The industry can grow 20 years longer. In 2040 the world population will peak at 8 billion; at a much higher level of consumption. This increases pollution, depresses agricultural yields and requires huge investments in the maintenance of production methods. The population eventually declines due to food shortages and the negative health effects of pollution.

In 2004 , the authors published the 30-year update. In it, they brought the data used up to date, made slight changes to their computer model World3 and calculated possible developments based on various scenarios from the year 2002 to the year 2100. In most of the calculated scenarios, the growth limits were exceeded and then followed Collapse (“overshoot and collapse”) by 2100 at the latest. Continuation of the “business as usual” of the last 30 years will lead to collapse from 2030 onwards.

Even with energetic implementation of environmental protection and efficiency standards, this tendency can often only be moderated, but no longer prevented. Only the simulation of an extremely ambitious mixture of restricting consumption , controlling population growth, reducing pollutant emissions and numerous other measures results in a sustainable society with almost 8 billion people.

The 2004 study also goes into the development from 1972 to 2002 and describes, among other things

  • an increase in social inequalities (20% of the world's population owned 85% of global gross domestic product (GDP))
  • the soil quality (40% of the arable land would be overexploited)
  • the overfishing (75% of fish stocks are already fished), and as early as 1972 that
  • the exhaustion of fossil raw materials is imminent in a few decades.

The authors assume that the earth's capacity to provide raw materials and absorb pollutants (see ecological footprint ) was already exceeded in 1980 and will continue to be exceeded (by around 20% in 2004).

2012 - 40 years later

The 40-year forecast to 2052

In May 2012, Jørgen Randers , who had already been among the authors of the first publication in 1972, presented a renewed forecast under the title 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years at an event organized by the Club of Rome .

Already Beyond? - 40 Years Limits to Growth

Already Beyond? Young scientists from China and Indonesia with Dennis Meadows
Already too late? Panel discussion in the gallery building of the Herrenhausen Gardens
Wilhelm Krull , Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation , thanked the participants in the Herrenhausen Symposium

40 years after the Volkswagen Foundation had funded the first study on the limits to growth, the Volkswagen Foundation invited the end of November 2012 in its series of events mansions symposia a two-day conference under the title Already Beyond? - 40 Years Limits to Growth (transl .: "Already too late? ..."). Accompanied by a winter school in Visselhövede with the main topic Limits to Growth Revisited for 60 young scientists, international “established experts” met for the conference in the gallery building of the Herrenhausen Gardens in Hanover to discuss current findings. In addition to Dennis Meadows, the participants on the podium included:

2016 - One percent is enough

Demand: reduce the growth rate of the population

One percent is enough is the name of the report to the Club of Rome in 2016. It bears the subtitle “Fighting social inequality, unemployment and climate change with little growth”. The title of the English edition is: "Reinventing prosperity". The two authors Jørgen Randers and Graeme Maxton are two of the world's most influential futurologists in the assessment of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit . At the book presentation, Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller said that the Club of Rome had always been ahead of its time: "Our western economic and consumption model ... [is] not the future model for India and Africa."

The book is not only about limiting growth in the industrialized countries, but also about turning away from current radical market thinking as a whole and about a radical restructuring of the national economies. "The economic system is more the cause of our problems and not their solution," the authors say. With their theses, they hope to gain broad support: "Our proposals should be very attractive to the democratic majority of voters, because almost all measures not only create a better world in the long term, but also immediate short-term benefits for most people".

In addition to the economic system, the authors are concerned with limiting the world's population . They identify the doubling of the population in the past 50 years as the main cause of the ongoing destruction of our planet and plead for the growth rate of the population to be further reduced or turned negative.

13 suggestions to reduce unemployment, inequality & global warming

  1. Shortening annual working hours so that everyone has more free time.
  2. Raising the retirement age so that older people can support themselves for as long as they want.
  3. A redefinition of the term "paid work ", which also includes home care for relatives.
  4. Increase in unemployment benefits to increase demand during transition .
  5. Raising taxes on corporations and the rich to redistribute profits, especially those from automation .
  6. Increased use of green stimulus packages , financed by additional “printed” money or tax increases, so that the state can react to climate change and redistribute income .
  7. Taxation of fossil fuels and fair distribution of the proceeds to all citizens, so that low-carbon energy becomes competitive.
  8. Shift from income taxation to taxation of emissions and raw material consumption in order to reduce the ecological footprint, preserve jobs and reduce the use of raw materials .
  9. Increase inheritance taxes to reduce inequality and increase government revenues.
  10. Promote unionization to increase incomes and reduce exploitation .
  11. Restricting foreign trade where necessary to preserve jobs, increase general well-being and protect the environment.
  12. Encouraging smaller families ( birth control ) to reduce population pressures on the planet.
  13. Introduction of a basic living income for those who need it most so that everyone can live without fear of the future.

Source:

Sugar Tax, Free Trade Restriction & Birth Control in Industrialized Countries

  • Taxes on sugar: The consequences of obesity, depression and shortened lifetimes should be borne by the manufacturers of the corresponding foods.
  • Turning away from free trade: Liberalized trade could worsen unemployment because it makes it easier for companies to relocate jobs abroad.
  • Birth control in industrialized countries: Children in industrialized countries use 30 times more resources than children in developing countries. Therefore, the birth rate should also fall in industrialized countries. Women who have at most one child should therefore receive a cash bonus.

Growth Critical Publications

tradition

The Limits to Growth is part of a long tradition of growth-critical publications. The criticism of exponential growth processes is thousands of years old. The wheat grain legend and the Josephspfennig are known . In the Bible , too, a prohibition of interest is pronounced in several places , e.g. B. in Deuteronomy 23: 20-21:

“You shouldn't impose interest on your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is borrowed for interest. You may impose interest on the stranger, but you must not impose interest on your brother so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the business of your hand in the country to which you come to take possession. "

- 5 Mos 23 : 20-21  ELB

Likewise in the Koran , in sura 3, verse 130:

“You believers! Do not take interest by taking back what you have borrowed in multiple amounts! "

- Quran, sura 3, verse 130

Chapter I of the report The Limits to Growth was preceded by a quote from Han Fei-Tzu (approx. 500 BC):

“People think that five sons are not too many and that every son has five sons; if the grandfather dies he will have twenty-five offspring. Therefore there are more and more people and their wealth is dwindling; they work hard for low wages. "

- Han Fei-Tzu : The Limits to Growth

Aristotle said in 322 BC Chr .:

“Most people think that a state that can make people happy has to be big; but even if they're right, they don't know what big and small mean in states ... There is also a limit to the size of states, just like for every other thing, for plants, animals and hand tools ; for these things lose their natural effectiveness when they are too big or too small; either they completely lose their character or they are destroyed. "

- Aristotle : The Limits to Growth

Thomas Robert Malthus warned in 1798 in his essay The Principle of Population in front of the population case that would result from population growth. In 1865, in The Coal Question , William Stanley Jevons predicted that coal would be exhausted for 1980 and formulated the Jevons' paradox : technical progress that leads to more efficient use of raw materials can nevertheless lead to an increased consumption of these raw materials.

As a result of the report The Limits to Growth , a number of growth-critical reports and environmental scenarios were published , some with international distribution, some with regional reference. Probably the most significant follow-up report is Global 2000 - The Report to the President . In the appendix of this report the various world models are discussed, of which World3 is only one of many, Global 2000 itself was based on the so-called “world model of government” (meaning the US government). In German-speaking countries in 1994, the book was published madness growth of Reiner Klingholz . The diagrams from the study The New Limits to Growth were also shown in the richly illustrated work . In these curves, the report published in 1995 attacked the Club of Rome Factor 4 - Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use , by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins , back.

Around the same time as the 30-year update, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published in 2005 showed that out of 24 key ecosystems, 15 are overexploited, which corresponds to a rate of 60%. With some systems the consequences have already been shown, with others the functionality would decrease in the future under constant stress, so the conclusions of the study.

Part of the ZEIT library of 100 non-fiction books

The Limits to Growth has been added to the ZEIT library of 100 non-fiction books .

literature

Web links

Commons : The Limits to Growth  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ St. Gallen Symposium: Past Symposia
  2. Martin Schulze Wessel: The Prague Spring: Departure into a new world . Reclam-Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-950514-5 ( google.ch [accessed November 25, 2019]).
  3. a b Jay Wright Forrester: The Diabolical Control Loop. Can humanity survive? Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1972, ISBN 3-421-02632-7 .
  4. a b Volkswagen Foundation: 40 Years of “Limits to Growth”: Public evening event with Dennis Meadows ( Memento of the original from April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.volkswagenstiftung.de
  5. ^ Matthew R. Simmons: Revisiting the Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All? October 2000, p. 1 ( PDF; 522 kB )
  6. Meadows et al. a .: The Limits to Growth 1972, translation by Hans-Dieter Heck, 14th edition, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1987, ISBN 3-421-02633-5 : p. 17.
  7. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth . Pp. 172-173.
  8. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth . P. 175.
  9. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 26, 1st paragraph
  10. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 25, fig. 5
  11. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. Pp. 82-91
  12. Hartmut Bossel: Weltmodell World3-03 . ISBN 978-3-86563-387-3 .
  13. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 79, 1. para.
  14. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 148, fig. 46.
  15. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. Chapter IV
  16. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 119, fig. 36
  17. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 123, fig. 39
  18. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 119 ff., Fig. 40–42
  19. Meadows et al. a .: The Limits to Growth 1972, translation by Hans-Dieter Heck, 14th edition, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1987. ISBN 3-421-02633-5 . P. 172
  20. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 86, fig. 25
  21. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 113, fig. 35
  22. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 79, 1st paragraph, 9th line
  23. ^ Saskia Gerber: The environmental movement in the GDR. GRIN Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-638-72650-9 .
  24. ^ Julian L. Simon : The Ultimate Resource. 1981, ISBN 0-85520-563-6 ; ders .: The Ultimate Resource II. 1996, ISBN 0-691-00381-5
  25. Julian L. Simon & Herman Kahn (eds.): The Resourceful Earth: A Response to "Global 2000". 1984, ISBN 0-631-13467-0 .
  26. a b Newsweek. March 13, 1972, p. 103
  27. Alexander Neubacher: Once again the end of the world . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44, October 31, 2011.
  28. Ugo Bardi: The Limits to Growth Revisited , 2011, ISBN 1-4419-9415-7 , pp. 90 ff.
  29. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. Pp. 45-49
  30. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. P. 55
  31. ^ Graham Turner: A Comparison of The Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality. In: Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED). CSIRO Working Paper Series Number 2008-9. June 2008, ISSN  1834-5638 ( PDF )
  32. Jeff Hecht: Prophesy of economic collapse "coming true" . In: New Scientist . November 17, 2008.
  33. ^ G. Turner: Is Global Collapse Imminent? In: Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne (Ed.): MSSI Research Paper . No. 4 , 2014 ( edu.au [PDF]).
  34. Meadows et al .: The New Frontiers of Growth. Rowohlt, 1995, ISBN 3-499-19510-0 , p. 162
  35. Meadows et al .: The New Frontiers of Growth. Scenarios 1–13
  36. Meadows et al .: The New Frontiers of Growth. Pp. 123-127
  37. Meadows et al .: The New Frontiers of Growth. s. Chapter 5
  38. ^ Club of Rome: The count-up to 2052: An overarching framework for action
  39. Volkswagen Foundation: Documentation: "Already Beyond? - 40 Years Limits to Growth"
  40. Volkswagen Foundation: Already beyond? 40 Years "Limits to Growth"  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.volkswagenstiftung.de  2012 (program; PDF)
  41. a b Futurologists advocate a one-child policy in industrialized countries . In: The time . 13th September 2016.
  42. a b The rich world must rethink the economy , by Juliane Kipper, n-tv, September 13, 2016
  43. a b c d dab / dpa: Researchers demand rewards for childless women . In: Spiegel Online . 13th September 2016.
  44. Club of Rome: One percent is enough ( memento of the original from September 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Deutschlandfunk, September 13, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ardmediathek.de
  45. One percent is enough - Fighting social inequality, unemployment and climate change with little growth (Slideshow, there: p. 17 ff) by Jørgen Randers and Graeme Maxton, oekom 2016.
  46. a b The demands of the “Club of Rome” . In: FAZ . 13th September 2016.
  47. a b Patrick Bernau : More children? "Wrong and stupid" . In: FAZ . 13th September 2016.
  48. Koran, Sura 3, verse 130 on Corpus Coranicum .
  49. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. s. Chapter 1.
  50. Meadows et al .: The Limits to Growth. s. Chapter 5.
  51. Reiner Klingholz: Crazy Growth - How Much Human Can the Earth Endure? . ISBN 3-570-19026-9 .
  52. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker , Amory Lovins , Hunter Lovins : Factor 4: Double prosperity - halved consumption of nature . ISBN 3-426-26877-9 .