Center for Social Innovation

Life as we know it will come to a screeching halt within 200 years unless humans reduce their consumption, suggests a new research report. “If the current trends continue, there is a very realistic possibility that we will run out of resources,” explains Yogendra Shastri, the study’s lead author and a research engineer at the Vishwamitra Research Institute in Westmont, Ill. “There just won’t be enough food to eat.”

To study whether sustainability is even feasible, Shastri and colleagues first used known data to develop a computer model of how the world’s major systems—resources, plants, herbivores, carnivores, industries, and humans—interact with each other. They then played out different scenarios—a population explosion and continued growth in rates of per capita consumption—over the course of 200 years. (Their scenarios did not account for climate change.) They found that if consumption rates follow the same trajectories they have in the past, human beings will face extinction within 105 ... Read more