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limits to Growth of Resource Use, Population, Pollution Urged Again • Update of 20-year-old study of world economy says cuts to industrial output vital; economists, business leaders disagree Lois R. Ember, C&EN Washington
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hree systems analysts, building on their 20-year-old controversial but influential study, "Limits to Growth/' have now written "Beyond the Limits," a study that advocates the concept of enough: enough growth to achieve a sustainable society, but no more. Unless present consumption of materials and energy, population growth, and pollution are scaled back—and fairly soon, they contend—the consequences for the world economy within another few decades will be dire. Economists and industrialists take issue with this. According to the "Beyond the Limits" analysts, human society is now consuming resources and producing wastes at rates Earth can no longer sustain. These physical limits are being "overshot/' in spite of improved technology and despite more public and political awareness of environmental issues. Using an updated system dynamics computer model (World3) and more extensive data, the analysts again predict the possibility of global economic collapse. But, they argue, as they did in their first study, such an outcome is avoidable. In "Beyond the Limits," they outline corrective options that, if taken, can move the world economies away from collapse and toward sustainable development. Such a sustainable society would meet its own needs without hindering future societies from meeting theirs. To prevent a headlong plunge into an ecological disaster, the analysts recommend: 28
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• Using such nonrenewable resources as fossil fuels, groundwaters, and minerals at minimal rates. • Using living, renewable resources only at rates at which they can regenerate themselves. • Using all resources at maximum efficiency. • Halting the exponential growth of population and industrial output by adopting the concept of "enough" rather than "more." • Developing approaches to end poverty based on concepts of "sufficiency" and "solidarity." Twenty years ago the three analysts— Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers—formed part of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team probing the limits to growth. Their study became the first report of the Club of Rome, an informal group of scientists, educators, economists, industrialists, and civil servants interested in humanity's present and future plight. That first study, published at the height of environmental awareness and just before the oil embargo, was both soundly panned and widely praised. Environmental activists embraced it wholeheartedly. Economists and industrialists blasted the study, saying it ignored technological innovation. This mixed response was understandable: The study challenged the existing paradigm that growth could continue unchecked. "It probably spawned more research projects than any other book" then published, says Lester R. Brown, president of Worldwatch Institute. It fostered "a whole new kind of thinking. We no longer link energy use and economic growth in lockstep anymore. We used to," Brown explains. "Beyond the Limits" is not likely to be as influential in quite the same ways as the first study, Brown says. But he adds, "I am impressed with the clarity of thinking and writing." Not so the business community.
According to a source who asks not to be named, "The business community thinks it's garbage to project everything out into the future and then say if there are no changes the world is going to end." This source argues that changes occur all the time and they have to be factored in for projections to be meaningful. As Norine Kennedy, environmental affairs director for the U.S. Council for International Business, explains, "Even small changes compounded over 30 years can make for huge differences in outcome." The anonymous source adds that the business community has the same problem with all models, and is not singling out the World3 model for special scorn. Although their recent findings will likely be perceived as predictions—as those in "Limits to Growth" were—the three analysts view them as choices and opportunities. They see their study casting forth challenges: They are calling for equity, sufficiency, efficiency, "love, generosity, and compassion," says Donella Meadows. "We are delivering a message of necessary transformation, not a message of doom," she adds. "It would be an interesting irony if the only way out of our dilemma was to be good." Lawrence H. Summers, chief economist at the World Bank, argues that limiting growth even by doing good is not the answer to overcoming poverty or correcting environmental problems. "Limiting growth is a sledgehammer approach to environmental improvement." According to Donella Meadows, topping the world's population at "8 billion people living at the European standard of living is sustainable over the next century." A laudable goal, Summers agrees, but one that is only possible with "growth on a massive scale. . . . Our best estimate at the World Bank is that an additional 1% of growth in the developed world raises
Key conclusions of "Limits to Growth" • . . • If growth trends in world population, industrialization, resource depletion, pollution, and food production continue unchanged, limits to growth will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. • These growth trends can be changed to establish a condition of
economic and environmental stability that is sustainable far into the future. • The sooner nations decide to alter current growth trends and begin to take appropriate corrective steps, the greater will be the chances for succeeding.
• •. have been strengthened in "Beyond the limits" • The use of essential resources and generation of certain pollution have already passed rates that are physically sustainable. • If significant cuts in materials and energy flows are not made, there will be uncontrolled decline in per capita food output, energy use, and industrial production in the coming decades. • This decline can be avoided by completely revising policies and prac-
incomes in the developing world by 0.4%." Summers contends that growth is essential for solving serious environmental problems in the developing world. "It provides the resources for sanitation systems ... generates the resources for fertilizer ... [and] creates the will and the way to impose the tougher [antipollution standards that are necessary." His theme, with some variation, is echoed in "Changing Course," a report prepared by world business leaders for the United Nation's Earth Summit taking place this June in Rio de Janeiro. (The report is being released next week by MIT Press, $16.95.) "Changing Course" was prepared by the Business Council for Sustainable Development, an informal group formed to respond to Maurice Strong's request for business input to the Earth Summit. Strong is secretary-general of Earth Summit, officially the UN Conference on Environment & Development. The international group, based in Geneva, comprises about 50 chief executive officers, including Frank Popoff of Dow Chemical Co. and Edgar S. Woolard of Du Pont. According to John Adams, spokesman for the Business Council for Sustainable Development, the business community is convinced that "economic incentives will work better to provide
tices that perpetuate growth in material consumption and in population, and by dramatically increasing efficient use of materials and energy. ® A sustainable society, still economically and technically feasible, requires an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life rather than on the quantity of output. It requires maturity, compassion, and wisdom more than productivity and technology.
the kind of environmental protection we're looking for. You don't have to throttle back on economic development." In fact, the business council argues that sustainable development is only possible if there is economic growth. Competitive free markets are needed to develop new technologies that, in turn, will fire up the economic engine while reducing environmental impacts. The business council terms this "ecoefficiency." 'The business community recognizes the need for more efficient use of resources and the elimination of wastes. Being more efficient and, by extension, more environmentally friendly is good for business and good for the environment," Kennedy says. Relating efficiency to "Beyond the Limits," R. Garrity Baker, director of international affairs for the Chemical Manufacturers Association, points out, "When you look at this study, all predictions are based on the assumption that things won't change." But, in fact, he says, things "have changed quite considerably in the chemical industry. Chemical manufacturing is energy intensive, but between 1974 and 1990 there has been a 43% gain in energy efficiency. I can't predict whether there will be another 40% gain in the next couple of decades." However, he implies that some substantial gain is likely.
Summers also homes in on assumptions, arguing that the World3 model "is only feeding back the [analysts'] prior views . . . their conclusions are preordained." He notes the original study projected scarcity of fossil fuels but, in fact, he says, the price of gasoline is cheaper today than it was in the early 1970s. Higher prices, he explains, are to be expected as commodities become scarcer. And he slams this model of the world economy for not containing "a single price or a single endogenous response to scarcity." "There is not a single price explicit in the model. That is correct and it is not important," Dennis Meadows says, "When the concern is changes in the economy over the short-term, you need to look at price. But over the long-term, price reflects underlying scarcity. We assumed price would do its job by signaling scarcity. So there is an adoptive mechanism in the model that responds to scarcity." Furthermore, he points out, the initial model placed the period of resource scarcity in the second and third decades of the next century, not in the 1990s. While supporting the necessity for sustainable growth, Summers criticizes the analysts for advocating slow growth. "Reducing the quantity of output is the least efficient and most costly way imaginable of improving the environment." It is better, he contends, to "internalize environmental costs to make polluters and their customers pay for their pollution." Dennis Meadows counters that Summers' statement "reflects the most profoundly destructive assumption underlying the practice of developmental economics today. When he says development or growth he means gross national product—a measure of flow, not stocks such as houses and cars. It is stock, not flow that is of benefit to people. Stock raises social welfare, flow causes pollution." And so the debate over limits to growth, begun 20 years ago, continues to rage. The new study will not generate the media attention of the first, at least not in the U.S.—although it is likely to be a media event overseas, Meadows adds. It will, he says, be widely used as an introductory text in colleges because "it is a nice compilation of what is currently known about the physical limits of Earth's resources and sinks." APRIL 27,1992 C&EN
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GOVERNMENT Summers believes that "the world's policymakers will find 'Beyond the Lim its' beyond belief." But Dennis Mead ows, calmly, if sadly, responds: "I hon estly believe we're right. Not literally, but I think we will see a global collapse on a number of key issues by the middle
of the next century. And it's almost too late to avoid that outcome." "Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustain able Future," is published by Chelsea Green Publishing Co., Post Mills, Vt., $19.95. Π
Knotty biotech issues receive attention Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, Calif., applied for a patent on their research in 1982. The patent included claims to both an improved process for purifying Factor VIILC and the highly purified and con The explosive and at times chaotic centrated Factor VIILC product itself, growth over the past two decades of Irving says. what is now called the biotechnology Working backward from purified industry has left a legacy of knotty is Factor VIILC, Genentech scientists de sues that needs to be resolved. Legisla veloped recombinant Factor VIILC in tors, patent lawyers, and representa the early 1980s. At least some of the tives of the biotechnology industry purified Factor VIILC used in the Ge have been working on those issues, nentech research was obtained using with varying degrees of success. an antibody-based technique analo At a symposium sponsored by the gous to that developed by Zimmerman Biotechnology Secretariat on legislative and Fulcher. Scripps sued Genentech and legal issues in biotechnology, speak for patent infringement, Irving says, ers presented updates on progress to seeking damages and an injunction ward resolving some of the questions against further use of purified Factor faced by the still young industry. Bio VIILC by Genentech. Ruling on one technology patents, which, one speaker early motion by Scripps, a U.S. District observed, have eclipsed chemical pat Court granted Scripps summary judg ents in complexity, were a major theme ment against Genentech, in effect say ing that any purified Factor VIILC of the symposium. For example, Thomas L. Irving, a preparation, regardless of how it was patent attorney with the Washington, produced, was covered by the Scripps D.C., law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Clinic patent, and that Genentech had Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, examined infringed on the patent. the evolving concept of biotechnology On appeal, one of Genentech's argu patent infringement. Irving used the ments was that application of what is ongoing patent infringement case, known as the reverse doctrine of equiv Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation v. alents precluded a finding of infringe Genentech Inc., as an example of how ment. Irving points out that this doctrine patent claims are likely to be interpret excuses infringement of a product or ed by the courts. Irving is not repre process within the literal claims of a senting either party in the litigation. patent when that product or process The case involves human Factor performs the same function but in a sub VIILC, a protein essential to the clot stantially different way from the patent ting of blood. Concentrates of Factor ed product or process. "The purpose of VIILC extracted from human plasma the reverse doctrine of equivalents is to have been used for some time to treat prevent an unwarranted extension of the hemophiliacs. The protein occurs in claims beyond a fair scope of the paten normal blood plasma at a concentra tee's invention," Irving explains. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the tion of only 200 ng per mL. The total concentration of proteins in plasma is Federal Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment of about 70 mg per mL. Two Scripps Clinic researchers, The infringement by Genentech and re odore S. Zimmerman and Carol A. turned the issue to the district court for Fulcher, developed a monoclonal-anti reconsideration after a trial. Irving says body-based technique for isolating and the appeals court apparently was im purifying Factor VIILC from plasma. pressed with the argument that the
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source of a biotechnology product— purification versus production by re combinant techniques—is important. The court also appeared to take seri ously Genentech's assertion that there are differences in purity and activity of purified versus recombinant Factor VI ILC. The court's ruling suggests it is re luctant to accept broad patent claims that encompass advances in a rapidly evolving technology, Irving says. Albert P. Halluin, a patent attorney with the San Francisco law firm Fliesler, Dubb, Meyer & Lovejoy, dis cussed an emerging trend in patent le gal decisions that he believes threatens progress in biotechnology research. In two recent cases, courts have ruled that depositing a bioculture in a recognized culture depository is not required to fulfill the "best mode" requirement of a patent specification. Halluin argues that allowing companies to avoid bioculture deposits "breaks the patent bar gain" and could result in a "decrease in the advancement of drugs and medical technology." Halluin points out that a patent on an invention is, in essence, a deal in which the inventor reveals the secrets behind an invention in exchange for a government grant of monopoly on the invention for 17 years. "Patent privi lege is not given away or traded away cheaply," Halluin maintains. "It is in stead policed and guarded by doctrines requiring that the applicant reveal all he knows in exchange for the public grant of private monopoly right."
Halluin: pnvilege not given or traded
