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By Thomas Döring, Birgit Aigner-Walder

The Limits to Growth was published 50 years ago. Ordered by the Club of Rome, the study was a milestone in the analysis of the economic, demographic, technical and ecological effects of the existing economic system. In industrialised Western countries in particular, the critical examination of the development model of continuous economic growth led to a broad discussion about the far-reaching implications of a global economy focusing on growth, on a planet with finite natural resources.

Criticism of the growth paradigm, dominant in both market-based and planned economic systems, has existed (almost) as long as economic growth itself. For example, Thomas Malthus (1798) reflected on the natural boundaries of economic and population growth very early on (Hussen, 2018). However, Meadows et al. (1972) carried out a notably broad system analysis. On the one hand, they examined existing ecological as well as socio-economic development trends and their global effects in detail. Secondly, the use of computer models to simulate different development scenarios of the world economy, based on the availability of data, was a methodological novelty at the time.

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