Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia’s famously climate skeptic former Prime Minister Tony Abbott won leadership by a single vote, because a senior member of parliament had learned the hard way to be skeptical of defective computer models and exaggerated claims of imminent disaster.
The day that plunged Australia’s climate policy into 10 years of inertia
Ten years ago today, Andrew Robb arrived at Parliament House intent upon an act of treachery.
No-one was expecting him. Robb was formally on leave from the Parliament undergoing treatment for his severe depression.
But the plan the Liberal MP nursed to himself that morning would not only bring about the political demise of his leader, Malcolm Turnbull, but blow apart Australia’s two great parties irrevocably just as they teetered toward consensus on climate change, the most divisive issue of the Australian political century.
They have never again been so close.
…
Enter the quiet assassin
Robb obtained a confidential copy on the Monday afternoon. He says it horrified him.
“It was a total sell-out, but it was so cleverly crafted that it would look, to the less informed, like we’d won the lottery in the negotiations,” Robb would later write in his memoir, Black Dog Daze.
…
And so it was that Andrew Robb made one of the most extraordinary and — by most conventional measures — indefensible tactical decisions in the history of political chicanery.
…
Robb ripped himself a scrap of paper and scrawled a note to Turnbull.
“The side effects of the medication I am on now make me very tired. I’d be really grateful if you could get me to my feet soon,” he wrote.
Turnbull called Robb to speak soon after. He rose, and denounced the proposed scheme in forensic detail, his words carrying significant weight as the erstwhile bearer of the relevant portfolio.
The deal never recovered. The meeting went on for six more hours. Turnbull — a streetfighter when cornered — added the numbers of shadow Cabinet votes to the “yes” votes in the party room and declared that he had a majority.
…
One week and one day later — December 1, 2009 — a ballot was held for the leadership of the Liberal Party.
Tony Abbott — who nominated against both Turnbull and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey — won by a single vote.
…
Limits To Growth is still the highest-selling environmental book in the history of the world, having sold 30 million copies in more than 30 languages.
But Robb’s early fascination with the work gave way to distrust of its conclusions and primitive computer modelling; he says its warnings of resource exhaustion and economic collapse towards the end of the 20th century were overstated.
“The thing they didn’t talk about was technology. That you could find gas 300 kilometres offshore, for example, and find a way to bring it onshore. Because of this, the Club of Rome — which was quite a reputable group of people — looked more and more ridiculous as the years rolled on.“
The Club of Rome has its critics and its defenders; Limits To Growth was commonly derided by the 1990s as a misguided Doomsday scenario, but has enjoyed something of a renaissance lately. The CSIRO published a paper in 2008 finding that the book’s 30-year modelling of consequences from a “business as usual” approach to economic growth was essentially sound.
But what’s not deniable is that this work influenced one young man who grew up to be one member of a parliamentary party with a singular role to play in one vote on a policy that would either change or not change the course of a country.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-24/10-years-of-climate-change-inertiaand-the-role-of-andrew-robb/11726072
I understand Andrew Robb’s disillusionment with computer modelling, based on his experience with The Limits to growth.
LTG is easy to criticise, it is full of assumptions and guesses, assigning arbitrary meaning to abstract quantities. For example, at one point the authors admit an assumption 10x current global pollution is relatively harmless, but 100x current pollution is lethal. The author’s arbitrary assumption that substantially increased pollution is automatically harmful is contradicted by historical evidence that our ancestors’ coal powered pursuit of industrialization and economic growth radically increased life expectancy. Worst of all, The Limits to Growth does not clearly define what they mean by pollution.
The LTG criticism of technology as a long term fix for limits casually dismisses thousands of years of human innovation and problem solving.
ABC Columnist Annabel Crabb does not provide a link to the CSIRO study which suggested the Club of Rome was right, but I think she meant this one;
A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality
Graham M Turner (CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia) 2008
In 1972, the Club of Rome’s infamous report “The Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al., 1972) presented some challenging scenarios for global sustainability, based on a system dynamics computer model to simulate the interactions of five global economic subsystems, namely: population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources. Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century. This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970–2000 with scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth. The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the “standard run” scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies. The results indicate the particular importance of understanding and controlling global pollution.
Read more: https://ideas.repec.org/p/cse/wpaper/2008-09.html
Interestingly the CSIRO download link for the full paper doesn’t work, but I found another copy.
The CSIRO paper points out some major flaws with the Limits to Growth, such as LTG’s treatment of “non renewable resources”;
A potentially confounding issue is the aggregate nature of the non-renewable resource variable in the LtG simulation. Resources are not considered separately, but as an aggregate. If there is little substitutability between resources then the aggregate measure of the non-renewable resources remaining is determined by the resource in shortest supply because economic growth within the model is affected by the increasing extraction effort associated with this resource. If there is unlimited substitutability then the aggregate measure is determined by the sum of all resources including the most readily available resource because as other resources are diminished the industrial process can switch to more available resources without (in this case) significant impact.
Other variables were also “aggregated” in questionable ways;
The World3 model was highly aggregated, treating variables as either totals, such as population being the total world population, or appropriate averages, such as industrial output per capita. No spatial or socio-economic disaggregation was directly employed in the model structure, although the values of parameters were informed by available data at suitable levels of disaggregation.
Clearly aggregating “non-renewable resources” and per-capita industrial output as single numbers is absurd. Yet despite these criticisms the CSIRO study concludes that The Limits to Growth has value. For example, the last paragraph of the CSIRO study;
In addition to the data-based corroboration presented here, contemporary issues such as peak oil, climate change, and food and water security resonate strongly with the feedback dynamics of “overshoot and collapse” displayed in the LtG “standard run” scenario (and similar scenarios). Unless the LtG is invalidated by other scientific research, the data comparison presented here lends support to the conclusion from the LtG that the global system is on an unsustainable trajectory unless there is substantial and rapid reduction in consumptive behaviour, in combination with technological progress.
I would love to know exactly what would constitute invalidation in the eyes of true believers in “The Limits to Growth”.
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Annabel casually ignores the fact that the rank and file of the Liberal party were openly fuming at Turnbull at this time.
The view was that that if they had wanted to support Labor policies they would have voted for Labor and if their local members wanted someone to help put up posters, walk the streets letterboxing and stand all day in the sun at the booths come election day then MAYBE they might like to remember that.
Crabbe is ignoring this, choosing instead to paint the occasion as selfish traitors overthrowing a beloved and wise figure.
Instead the removal of Turnbull and the rise of Abbott has always been seen by the actual Conservative base as a Grand Moment where the silent majority managed to take their party back from the elites of the MSM.
Abbott was and still is incredibly popular among CONSERVATIVES. The fact the MSM and the Left hate and fear him do not change that fact. Crabbe cannot accept that fact because Crabbe is Left. The Left cannot stand deviation from ‘What is Best’ and despise opposing views. They Know Best, the are correct and if you disagree you are clearly WRONG. To her version of history Turnbull knew best and it was only selfish disloyal people who betrayed him.
Fake News.
Annabel Crabbe also believes that wind turbines do not produce harmful infransonics. Plus she is one of the cohort of female ABC journalists who worshipped Malcolm Turncoat as the saviour of The Liberal Party from the conservatives (making Abbott the Devil).
She is thoroughly in the Green camp in pretty much every way.
It is worth remembering that, in all this, the old centre-left has been sold down the river by an unholy alliance of hard left, celebrity journalists and dodgy academia.
Here, the second category fits. No longer satisfied by reporting news, the celebrity journalist must put a personal slant on proceedings, to the point where one no longer fulfills the role of journalist, rather that of activist and lobbyist. Whenever a celebrity journalist has been elevated to parliament via a democratic vote, the result has hardly been impressive. A bit of trite commentary does not a formidable politician make.
By contrast, the centre-left once drew formidable politicians from ordinary working lives. Being a celebrity journalist is not proper, ordinary work, however. Giving such people the power of state-broadcaster-sanctioned commentary on politics, with the hard left and its cloistered academia cheering on, is a recipe for political disaster for the cautious centre left as much as it is for the right.
Every year I contribute to a Christian organization that sends people to some of the poorest countries in the world. They spend years teaching whole villages to become more self sufficient, more efficient, and more prosperous. This happens year by year, village by village. Do pessimistic studies about global limitations take such efforts into account?
From the CSIRO conclusions:
Pathetic.
Let’s “go to the tape.” Let’s actually look at the “standard run” model. I used a wonderful online digitizing program, with the y-axis arbitrarily labeled as zero and 100 at the graph origin and maximum value.
Food per capita values:
1900 = 27.4
1951 = 40.4
1969 = 45.5
1988 = 48.7
2000 = 49.5
2014 = 49.9
2018 = 48.3
2023 = 44.0
2026 = 39.9
2031 = 35.5
2036 = 30.8
2042 = 26.9
In other words, Limits to Growth reference scenario predicted global food per capita would peak in 2014, and by 2023 would be below the global food per capita in 1969. (For a hint how ridiculous that is, think about what per-capita consumption of food was in India and China in 1969.) And by 2042, the Limits to Growth reference scenario predicts that global food per capita will be lower than it was in 1900. (What percentage of people in the world of 1900 were obese?)
I can see that Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander were just as incompetent and/or dishonest as late as 2014 (the “peak per capita food” year, per the Limits to Growth reference case).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
Pathetic. Simply pathetic.
@Mark Bahner, I just skimmed the pdf of LTG and I don’t understand exactly where you are getting your numbers from. Can you provide a page number? What I did spot on page 94 of the original 1972 work (pdf version):
QUOTE: We cannot forecast the precise population of the United States nor the GNP
of Brazil nor even the total world food production for the year 2015. The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them. On the other hand, it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socio-economic systems when the limits are reached. [end quote]
Obviously, projections for 2014 made way back in 1972 cannot be on the money, and the authors are clear that it is not their intent to call precise tops and bottoms in any given resource, including food, so your criticism appears to be directed at straw men. What I will say is that growth is only possible while positive feedbacks overpower negative feedbacks, and that positive feedbacks, if continued, are ultimately destabilizing for any system. Bottom line: physics trumps economics eventually. Why so few contemporary economists (in contrast to classical economists such as Ricardo) are willing to admit this puzzles me.
My numbers were taken from Graham Turner’s review of Limits to Growth versus actual data from 1972 to 2008:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Turner_Meadows_vs_historical_data.pdf
Specifically, go to Figure 1(a) on page 42 of that analysis. It’s titled, “Standard Run.” If the y-axis is “zero” at the bottom, and “100” at the top, you’ll get the numbers I gave. For example, the value in 1900 (the far left side of the graph) is 27.4, i.e., about one-quarter of the way up the graph. And the value for food per capita peaks in 2014 at 39.9, i.e., about halfway up the graph.
Calling Limits to Growth, and especially Graham Turner’s analysis of Limits to Growth, BS is not an attack on straw men, it’s properly characterizing the analyses. As I wrote, it was completely pathetic for Graham Turner not to mention in his analyses of 2008…and even his analysis of 2014!–that Limits to Growth predicted a *dramatic* decline in global per-capita food consumption, beginning in 2014. The predicted decline was so dramatic that the per-capita food consumption in 2042 is predicted to be *below* that of the year 1900!
Bottom line: physics trumps economics eventually. Why so few contemporary economists (in contrast to classical economists such as Ricardo) are willing to admit this puzzles me.
There is no conflict between economics and physics. Global economic growth (an increase in gross world product, or GWP) is an increase in the total *value* of goods and services in global economy. *Value* is not a physical parameter.
Correction: In Limits to Growth, the food per capita value peaks at 49.9 (i.e., about half way up the graph) in 2014. My previous comment which said the value was 39.9 was a typo.
Some would suggest that sabotaging bipartisan climate policy was a successful outcome for some, and unclear how the then Australian politician Andrew Robb linked LTG one way or the other, let alone how he understood it.
The Club of Rome and LTG could be described as a ‘riddle wrapped up in an enigma’ while LTG ‘theories’ were debunked by The University of Sussex once working papers were released, seems more pseudoscience constructs cooked up by PR types masquerading as ‘liberal and environmental’ science.
What is more interesting is who applies the LTG, who participated in and who hosted the Club of Rome?
On example of application is Herman Daly’s Steady-State Economy theory promoting the primacy of national borders, anti-globalism, avoidance of trade agreements and potential immigrants from the less developed world, stay where you are; quite popular with white nationalists and global corporate entities with existing global footprints aka US fossil fuel and auto sector.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly
Another, in parallel with the Club of Rome and a participant, Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich who through applying LTG to population and resources has been proven wrong, yet in Australia continues to be promoted along with Ehrlich’s former colleague’s application of LTG to ‘immigration’ i.e. recently deceased John Tanton whose network of white nationalists are now in the White House.
https://www.splcenter.org/20100630/greenwash-nativists-environmentalism-and-hypocrisy-hate
Tanton, Erhlich and Paul Watson (Sea Shepherd) were all colleagues at ZPG (and helped inform the Australian equivalent ‘Sustainable (population) Australia’ highlighting ‘runaway’ immigration and population growth degrading the environment vs. regulation on polluters and fossil fuels while splitting the centre vote), ‘green washing’.
The sponsors or supporters of ZPG were the Rockefeller Bros. Foundation (Standard Oil/Exxon), Ford and Carnegie Foundations. All had shown an interest in eugenics pre WWII in the US and Germany; by coincidence the Club of Rome was sponsored by Fiat and VW, and hosted on the Rockefeller estate.
https://prospect.org/features/guilt-association/
Call me a cynic but I guess this is clever long game of astro turfing blaming others for environmental degradation while fossil fuel, auto and related corporate entities flew under the radar through manipulation of politics and social narratives.
By the time of the Club of Rome Exxon scientists were aware of climate change science and global warming, but the strategy seemed about avoiding environmental regulation and limits on fossil fuels by lobbying politicians, vs. dog whistling immigrants, greenies, the left etc.?
@Andrew Smith, Erlich’s _Population Bomb_ preceded _Limits To Growth_ by several years, four I think, and it was a vastly more near term forecast that LTG. LTG foresaw most of the pain coming 50 or more years into the future, whereas Erlich though mass famine was only a decade away. But more to the point, the big factor that nullified Erlich’s forecast was the Green Revolution, and although selective crop breeding (basically vegetable eugenics) received most of the media attention, the heavy lifting of the Green Revolution was done by the increased application of fossil fuels to the agricultural process.
You are correct that population control/ZPG was championed by eugenicists after WW2. With eugenics in political disrepute, many leading eugenics supporters seem to have thought, very naively IMO, that they could achieve the same thing through promoting birth control. In fact, it backfired on them, since birth control has been adopted more effectively by the educated classes than by the less educated, actually spreading dysgenic fertility patterns around the world. Policies that reduce childhood mortality are also dysgenic, for other reasons. Why the post-War eugenicists seem not to have foreseen these results baffles me, since even the earliest eugenicists such as Sir Francis Galton and Karl Pearson expressed awareness of these problems.
ADDENDUM: “the heavy lifting of the Green Revolution was done by the increased application of fossil fuels to the agricultural process.”–AND I meant to add that it was the availability of natural resources to enable innovations such as the Green Revolution that _Limits To Growth_ struck at the heart of. Ehrlich looked primarily at one factor, population growth, whereas LTG, relying on the expertise of systems dynamics pioneer Jay Forester, looked at how multiple factors would interact with one another in complex ways, although the bulk of the book’s attention centered on the depletion of mineral resources, including fossil fuels, and showed that, with continued but not extraordinary rates of economic growth, even reserves that were 10 times what was believed to exist in 1972 would not buy the world much more time, due to the nature of exponential curves.
From the guest essay: ‘I would love to know exactly what would constitute invalidation in the eyes of true believers in “The Limits to Growth”.’
One of my pet peeves is people who review or critique books without reading them. Eric Worrall appears to have committed this cardinal sin. LTG forecasts a 100 year period from 1970 to 2070. If we get to 2070 without a population crash (and not just a gentle decline through voluntary birth control), then their “business as usual” or standard model scenario will clearly have been wrong. Although the authors did not set a specific date for the crash to begin because of the many unknowns, the shape of their graphs strongly suggested that the standard model crash should occur during the second half of their century long window, most likely starting a little after the year 2020–not their date, but what I inferred from their graphs when I read the book. It is a short and easy read, and you can view it online for free if you google the title. It is a serious work, not environmentalist hysteria, and still well worth reading. Although the authors considered the effects of various factors, I recall that their primary emphasis seemed to be on resource depletion. And one cannot wave off this concern by muttering something about “substitutes,” because substitutes deplete too. Technology refers to the many ingenious tricks which we apply to energy and minerals in order to raise our living standards, but it is much less useful when energy and minerals are rare and costly. Technology exploits raw materials, it is rarely a substitute for them.
http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf
You obviously have either not read the book, or don’t remember even the first thing about it. Look at Figures 35 to 42 in the book. The projections go to the year 2100, not 2070.
http://www.ecoglobe.org/scenarios/e/dkimble.htm
It’s worth reading to mock. Check out Table 4 of non-renewable natural resources, starting on page 56. Look at how many of the resources should have been completely spent by now.
“The Limits to Growth” was written when growth was considered a good thing. Despite however wrong it was, they won. Growth is now considered a bad thing. It is time for the sequel, “The Limits to Progress”. The word ‘progress’ is ambiguous — I mean the kind of ‘progress’ that progressives want.
“Growth is now considered a bad thing”–On what planet??? Let any candidate for president in EITHER major political party replace his promises of continued or faster economic growth with promises of stagnation or economic contraction (ie, recession), and you will see very quickly that hardly anyone considers growth to be a bad thing. The surest and least painful way to reduce or terminate, not per capita, but at least aggregate economic growth is to stop driving population increase through immigration, yet both major parties, and the leading minor parties (Greens and Libertarians) and all the major environmentalist organizations support continued large scale immigration and announce their disdain for “Malthusianism.” Please observe that this constitutes an “about face” by the top environmentalist groups from the movements old positions in the 1970’s. So who has really won this debate? Remember, Marxism has traditionally been as pro-growth as any laissez-faire capitalist, just not as effective at making it happen. Now even the leading environmentalist organizations are on the pro-growth, anti=Malthusian train. So the Club of Rome has decisively lost the battle for public opinion, although that does not refute their forecast. The verdict will come in over the next 50 years.
Re: “Turnbull called Robb to speak soon after. He rose, and denounced the proposed scheme in forensic detail, his words carrying significant weight as the erstwhile bearer of the relevant portfolio.”
Is Andrew Robb’s speech recorded anywhere, either audio or a transcript? I’d love to see the forensic detail!