After 50 years, there is still an ongoing debate about the Limits to Growth (LtG) study.
This paper recalibrates the 2005 World3‐03 model. The input parameters are changed to better match empirical data on world development. An iterative method is used to compute and optimize different parameter sets. This improved parameter set results in a World3 simulation that shows the same overshoot and collapse mode in the coming decade as the original business as usual scenario of the LtG standard run. The main effect of the recalibration update is to raise the peaks of most variables and move them a few years into the future. The parameters with the largest relative changes are those related to industrial capital lifetime, pollution transmission delay, and urban‐industrial land development time.
1 Introduction
The Limits to Growth (LtG) is the name of a study conducted in the late 1960s for the Club of Rome. A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a computer model that simulated some of the world's most important material variables, such as population, food production, resource use, and environmental impact. A total of 12 scenarios were presented in 1972 in the first book of the same name (Meadows et al., 1972). The scenarios cover the period from 1900 to 2100. The authors emphasize that the scenarios are not predictions. Rather, they are intended to illustrate the complex interrelationships within a dynamic system based on exponential growth.
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