lloyds of london report says that in the near future "hard men with guns eat first"...,

insurge |  “World3 was a very good, robust system,” he told us. “Some assumptions were incorrect and misparameterised — for instance, life expectancy is smaller than assumed, and industrial and service outputs are larger than assumed. And the model was missing some shock dynamics and feedback loops.”

The same questioner put his hand up and asked, “Does this mean the original model and its predictions are flawed?”

“I would say the model was largely correct,” said Jones. “It was right enough to give a fairly accurate picture of future limits to growth. But there are some incorrect parameters and gaps.”

The System Dynamics Model, Jones explained, is designed to overcome the limitations of World3 by recalibrating the incorrect parameters, adding new parameters where necessary, and inputting fresh data. There are now roughly 2,000 parameters in the model, drawing on a database of key indicators on resources and social measures for 212 countries, from 1995 until today.

Jones’ affirmation of the general accuracy of the limits to growth model was an obvious surprise to some in the room.

The original model forecasted global ecological and economic collapse by around the middle of the 21st century, due to the convergence of climate change, food and water scarcity, and the depletion of cheap fossil fuels — which chimes with both the GRO’s models.

Last year, Dr. Graham Turner updated his CSIRO research at the University of Melbourne, concluding that:

“… the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU [business-as-usual] scenario.”

For the first time, then, we know that in private, British and US government agencies are taking seriously longstanding scientific data showing that a business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to civilisational collapse within a few decades — generating multiple near-term global disruptions along the way.

The question that remains is: what we are going to do about it?