Entropy and the Limits to Growth.

Abstract

In its business-as-usual scenario, the 1972 Club-of-Rome report-The Limits to Growth-describes the collapse of the world economy around the year 2030, either because of the scarcity of natural resources or because of pollution. Mainstream economists, the high priests of secular societies, condemned it fiercely. Their gospel of perpetual economic growth, during which technological progress would solve all problems, promises a bright future for all mankind. On the other hand, engineers, natural scientists, and mathematicians realized that the breakdown scenario is due to the inclusion of the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Club-of-Rome's world model. According to these laws, nothing happens in the world without energy conversion and entropy production. In 1865, Rudolph Clausius, the discoverer of entropy, published the laws as the constitution of the universe. Entropy is the physical measure of disorder. Without a proper understanding of energy and entropy in the economy, all efforts to achieve sustainability will fail.