That was the title of the book that sold 12 million copies. That the N.Y. Times declared to be "one of the most important documents of our age ". It was published in 1972 and was based on cutting edge computer models developed at MIT. Just like Tom Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded" which was published a generation later, it was chock full of doom and gloom and predicted worldwide misery, if not outright extinction. Just like the prediction of another Ice Age that was predicted 3 years later in 1975 , it was WRONG. On just about every count. Just as Paul Ehrlich's lauded and best-selling 1968 book "The Population Bomb" predicted that "hundreds of millions" of people would starve in the 1970's as population growth swamped agricultural production. Which was also proved WRONG !
I was reminded of that book, which was required reading on every college campus in the 1970's, by the recent work of Bjorn Lomborg. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Lomborg laid out all the "predictions" and shows how all of them turned out to be wrong. Not some of them. ALL of them. Anyone who invested based on anything in that book would have gone broke. Minimal contrarianism would have resulted in profit. Those that read "The Limits To Growth" and abided by its contents while in positions of power led their countries to disaster ( Carter read it cover to cover and STILL thinks it is valid ! ). Those that took a more optimistic tack led their nations to prosperity. Like Reagan , Mulroney, Thatcher, Kohl and arguably Mitterand.
The MIT computer models predicted the collapse of civilization because of "nonrenewable resource depletion " and population growth. The models predicted that 12 of 19 key commodities would be gone long before now - aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, silver, tin, tungsten , zinc and of course, oil and natural gas.
Lomborg points out that things like lead and mercury have largely been replaced and human ingenuity has increased the discovery and extraction of the rest. Since 1970 gold reserves have gone from about 11,000 tons to 51,000. Another 400 million tons of copper have been produced and reserves are estimated at 700 million tons. The world has consumed four times the 1950 known reserves of aluminum and we have enough for another 177 years. U.S. natural gas resources have doubled in the last six years. And so on , and so on.
While aluminum is one of the earth's most common metals, there was a time when it was rarer than gold. According to Lomborg, Napoleon III of France exhibited bars of aluminum alongside the French crown jewels and his honored guests were thrilled to receive aluminum forks and spoons. Less honored guests received the same utensils made out of gold. What happened ? In 1886 the Hall-Heroult process was developed and it was no longer difficult and expensive to extract aluminum from bauxite.
I personally quibble with Lomborg's description of recycling as a "feel-good gesture that provides little environmental benefit at a significant cost". He focuses only on recycled paper and claims that forests were "never threatened in the first place." He claims that government subsidies make the whole process less than cost effective but does not provide the numbers to back up his assertion. I do know that Alcoa and the rest of the aluminum industry has been telling us for decades that it is cheaper and more energy efficient to recycle aluminum cans than to make new ones. Nobody is more wary of symbolism over substance than me. Nobody has attacked silly things that do nothing more than make us feel better about ourselves without accomplishing anything than me. Nonetheless I am not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to things like recycling.
Unless and until someone can show me that it is a waste of time and money, I'll still regard it as a sensible policy.
In 1980 a famous bet was made between economist Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich. Simon made a wager that any five commodities Ehrlich picked would be cheaper in 1990 than in 1980. Ehrlich picked five metals. All were cheaper in 1990. One of Ehrlich's advisors who told him to take the bet, John Holdren, is now Obama's science advisor.



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