by The Economist

About the author: The Economist is a British weekly newsmagazine.

Predictions of ecological doom, including recent ones, have such a terrible track record that people should take them with pinches of salt instead of lapping them up with relish. For reasons of their own, pressure groups, journalists and fame-seekers will no doubt continue to peddle ecological catastrophes at an undiminishing speed. These people, oddly, appear to think that having been invariably wrong in the past makes them more likely to be right in the future. The rest of us might do better to recall, when warned of the next doomsday, what ever became of the last one.

The Club of Rome’s False Predictions

In 1972 the Club of Rome published a highly influential report called “Limits to Growth”. To many in the environmental movement...