Posted by George Richardson <
gpr@albany.edu>
> I am not sure that it is possible to model sustainability in the long term.
""If it's possible to think about it, then it's possible to model it."" The worry David has is that the modeling would not have much predictive value, just as our thoughts about distant futures don't have much predictive value.
But the modeling of future scenarios may help to reveal insights anyway.
And if we are thinking about the future in order to help us pick healthy policies for the present, then modeling may be a necessary cognitive aid to thinking well, even if we can't predict.
> modelling is the sustainability of current technology and inevitably
> if your do this you get an unduly pessimistic view of the future.
> Malthus is the first of many examples of this.
Malthus was right in many crucial respects. His structural insights were clear and right on target. I think he gets a bad rap because most people have not read what HE wrote but just read what others say what they think he wrote. Paying attention to Malthus's structural insights all through the industrial revolution would have helped millions of poor people, but that didn't happen.
> At any point in the last 300 years if you built a model of
> sustainability, based upon the information available at the time that
> looked say 50 - 100 years ahead, then it would inevitably predict
> that economic and industrial growth was unsustainable in the long
> term. It is a good thing that system
An interesting thought. But the focus here is still on prediction rather than understanding. If we seriously interpreted, for example, Limits to Growth as prediction then I suppose we'd all be farming right now if we could, trying to set ourselves up for the coming scarcity-induced decline. I think we use World Dynamics and Limits to Growth to give us insights about the ways we should be thinking about current policy, rather than as prediction. All that is to say that industrial revolution SDers would have been properly ignored if they'd tried to make predictions from their 19th century models, but we would have loved to hear their insights.
..George Richardson
Posted by George Richardson <
gpr@albany.edu> posting date Wed, 6 Dec 2006 13:49:55 -0500 _______________________________________________