There is a much more subtle and completely novel threat to man's survival that looms, every year more menacingly, beside that of an atomic holocaust;… - Mihajlo D. Mesarovic

There is no such concept as one limit for the entice system: rather different parts of the system face different limits at different times with the traumatic experiences for the entire system depending on the interrelationship of the constituent parts - the collapse, if it occurs, would he regional rather than global, even though the entire global system would be affected.

Isn't it legitimate to ask, as representatives of the developing countries, whether there should be maximum limits consumption...?

General systems theory deals with the most fundamental concepts and aspects of systems. Many theories dealing with more specific types of systems (e.g., dynamical systems, automata, control systems, game-theoretic systems, among many others) have been under development for quite some time. General systems theory is concerned with the basic issues common to all these specialized treatments. Also, for truly complex phenomena, such as those found predominantly in the social and biological sciences, the specialized descriptions used in classical theories (which are based on special mathematical structures such as differential or difference equations, numerical or abstract algebras, etc.) do not adequately and properly represent the actual events. Either because of this inadequate match between the events and types of descriptions available or because of the pure lack of knowledge, for many truly complex problems one can give only the most general statements, which are qualitative and too often even only verbal. General systems theory is aimed at providing a description and explanation for such complex phenomena.