The Limits to Growth" - almost everyone has heard of this book by the Club of Rome from the early 1970s, as it was the first time that the idea of a sustainable economy was widely disseminated and the millions of readers (or just buyers?) of the book were made aware of the threats of climate change caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions - although it is funny that hardly anyone will doubt the last sentence, even though this particular topic was almost left out of the book.
The authors were more concerned with limits to population growth and resource depletion, which is to be taken literally, as the original English-language edition spoke of "Limits to Growth". In any case, the early 1970s put a serious damper on the unbridled belief in progress of the 1960s, when a plethora of futurologists wanted to predict the year 2000, which at least led to someone finding the courage these days to recall "the inexhaustible inventive power of man" and to predict that it was less about "The Limits to Growth" and more about "The Growth of Limits". This is the title of the book by physicist Simon Aegerter, which heralds a paradisiacal world for the 22nd century. According to Aegerter's estimates, the number of people will have stabilized at eleven billion by then, most of them living in high-rise buildings and commuting down to the world of work by elevator. Medicine will cure all diseases and abolish ageing. Greenhouse skyscrapers produce vegetables, salads and fruit, and the nutrient solutions needed to grow them are obtained from waste, resulting in a permanent circular economy. As everything can be completely recycled, mining becomes superfluous and meat is obtained from cell cultures.
This sounds like a brave new world, but Aegerter is describing a world for people other than those living today. Mortality is just as much a part of the existence of today's human race as concerns about health, which is not a technical variable, to name just two examples. People have never been able to live in a carefree paradise, which is why nobody wants to be there. On the contrary! "Open sesame! I want to go out!", as the Polish aphorist Stanisław Jerzy Lec wrote. However, he does not say where he is going. Perhaps home?
