A study conducted in 1972 hinted that the end of the world would happen around 2050, when the Earth would run out of resources and become uninhabitable.
Scientists from the Global Sustainability Institute of the Anglia Ruskin University, however, have put this date back by at least 50 years, claiming that our planet still has until the end of the century.
The scientists claim that the Earth will no longer have clean food and other crucial resources, which will make it impossible for humans to survive by the year 2100.
In 1972, a team of researchers used a computer model called World3 to predict that the world would end in 2050, which is only 35 years from now.
The program used huge amounts of data to determine when mankind would use up all the finite resources of our planet, but the scientists did not factor changes that paved way to the use of smaller amounts of energy while producing less pollution.
For the new study, which was published in the journal Sustainability, Aled Jones and colleagues updated the computer model used in the 1970s to predict how finite the resources on Earth are. Jones said that, while the scientists who conducted the study about four decades ago made a good attempt, their prediction was too pessimistic.
The researchers, however, acknowledged that the science that predicts the apocalypse is not an accurate one, saying that there are still a lot of questions on exactly when planetary limits will be reached and what the effect will be when this happens.
The researchers said that growth based on material consumption cannot continue indefinitely and is not grounded on the idea that the Earth has limited resources and land availability.
"When you run the newly-calibrated World3 model forward in time, society still collapses this century based on reasonable guesses of these limits, although there is of course great uncertainty around exactly what these limits are," Jones said.
Jones said that society has to find solutions to some of the problems noted in 1972 but that it is important to learn lessons from what has already been achieved and focus on efforts to avoid the limits.
"Global resource scarcity is real," Jones said. "I personally believe we should also solve massive inequality as we re-engineer our economy. I don't think any solution that does not address inequality provides economic stability as the availability of information and increasing access to visualizing the identities of inequality are now just a touch of the button away."
Photo: Tim J Keegan | Flickr
