The Global 2000 Report to the President

The Global 2000 Report to the President [1] was 1980 report on sustainable societal development, commissioned by President Jimmy Carter on May 23, 1977. The report was released at a press conference in the White House Press Room on July 24, 1980. The report 2000 sold 1.5 million copies in 9 languages There were many editions of the report.

The Global 2000 project was directed by Gerald O. Barney, and the main conclusion of the report was:

If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the worlds people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.[2]

The Global 2000 Report was based on the best data and models available from the 14 participating government agencies plus the World Bank. Projections were made using the computer models. No other country has ever undertaken a comparable study of the future of the world.

The Global 2000 project produced a report, but the Global 2000 project was much more than a report. It was the first (and to date the only) effort by a nation to prepare a 20-year outlook on probable changes in the world’s population, resources, economy, and environment. It was the first and only time the long term global professionals of an entire national government were assembled as a team to look at the future of the whole world. It was the first and only time that sector-specific global policy models (population, energy, agriculture, forestry, economy, minerals, non-fuel minerals, water, etc.) were assembled and consistency assessed as the “foundation for longer-term planning” that they in fact are.[3] It was the first and only time that all previous global studies were assembled and reviewed for their insights and recommendations. It was the first and only time that a nation made an assessment of all of its previous efforts to take a long-term view of anything.[4]

Global 2000 was not the first computer-based global study. The first computer-based global study, The Limits to Growth[5] was published in 1972. Limits questioned growth as the answer to all development and social problems and started a global discussion of global warming, energy scarcity, human population growth, plant and species extinctions , genetic diversity , and a global economic system based on unlimited human wants in contrast Earth's finite resources, etc. Nothing in the Global 2000 report refutes or contradicts the conclusions of Limits to Growth.

Publication

Library of Congress Classification: Volume 1: HC79.E5 G59 1980b

References

  1. ↑ Gerald O. Barney, Study Director, The Global 2000 Report to the President, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980
  2. ↑ Gerald O. Barney, Study Director, The Global 2000 Report to the President, Vol. I, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980.
  3. ↑ "Analysis of the Projection Tools: The Government's Global Model," Chapters 14-23, Gerald O. Barney, Study Director, The Global 200 Report to the President, Vol. II, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980
  4. ↑ "Lessons from the Past," Appendix A, Global 2000 Report to the President, Vol. II, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980
  5. ↑ Meadows, Meadows, Randers, and Behrens, The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, New York, 1972
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