Limits to Growth Revisited: Remember the Book from the Society of Rome in 1972 Predicting the Demise of Oil Production by the 1990s?

American Thinker ^ | 03/27/2023 | William R. Forstchen

[SeekAndFind]

Oh my God -- we’re doomed.  The UN’s Panel on Climate Change came out with a frightening report earlier this month that we are sitting on a global time bomb, and according to CNN, “time is running out,” without immediate drastic action.  The UN report states that if global temperatures reach 1.5 C above the pre-industrial temperature norm of 1850-1900, the resulting melting of the polar ice caps, rising oceans, and unprecedented ecological disaster will follow.

I read this a few days back on a dark and stormy night while working on my own tome about disaster, the next book in the One Second After series.  One Second After examines what would happen if we were ever hit by an enemy using an Electro-Magnetic Pulse generated from detonating a nuclear weapon in space.  But ecological disaster, which is all but inevitable according to the highly respected UN report, was far more frightening.  Closing off working on my book, I brewed yet another cup of coffee, sat back and pulled out a well-respected study on this existential threat to all mankind.

I started to thumb through the pages of a work that took a team of international experts years to research and has sold well over 12 million copies since publication.

I turned to the chapter on fossil fuels.  The report states we have only about twenty more years of oil out there, we are already at peak oil, which will then start to go downhill and the wells will run dry no matter how much we scramble to get more.  There will be a final rush to pump one more drop of oil even if at the cost of $20/gallon, but that in turn will accelerate the depletion into a death spiral.  Natural gas will not save us,

[SeekAndFind]

Climate is the big one this report.  Despite our feeble efforts to address the radical changes already taking place, the disaster will explode within ten to fifteen years, due in large part to the depletion of farmlands worldwide from the use of toxic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, soil exhaustion, and encroaching urban population.  The results: famine, disease, and mass starvation then triggering political instability in which hundreds of millions will die.

The list went on and on, a list that would render any sane reader numb with despair.  But me?   I could only smile at it all... You see, the book that I was reading, Limits to Growth, was published more than fifty years ago in 1972.

1972?  I remember it well.  I was in college and still of a mindset that swallowed much of what my young, hip professors were preaching that spring from this new bible.  It was time for the youth of America in post-Vietnam America to mobilize for a new crusade!  And of course, like most such movements, if anyone showed the slightest doubt, they were mocked as deniers and cast out into the darkness of their ignorance. The generation of Peace and Love would now work to Save the Planet!

What was happening in 1972 was an existential rethinking of our relationship to this blue marble floating in space that we now found ourselves trapped on.  The 150-year run of the Industrial Revolution, the emerging wave of the Technological Revolution that prophesied limitless growth, a world going forward into a better tomorrow, crashed on the shores of  environmental despair.

Of course, we believed it.  The model, after all, was based on “experts” belonging to the Society of Rome, a mysterious think tank who were the leaders of this new crusade that absolutely, 100% predicted catastrophe unless we took heed of their Cassandrian warnings.  It was a time to stop growth, stop innovation, stop evil rampant technology, and head to a brave new world teaching us that there had to be limits to growth.    

The dates for some of these predictions were clearly stated in the Limits to Growth: oil will no longer flow by the 1990s if current (1972) consumption continues.  Food by the 1980s will plunge to starvation levels and disastrous famines affecting hundreds of millions will be the new norm. The dying off will be upon us by 1985.  The climate?  Total disaster in the 1990s due to global cooling caused by greenhouse gas and smog blocking sunlight.  Every major resource needed for a high-tech world from copper to lithium will be depleted, leaving our world an empty husk. 

To make it worse, a book published a few years earlier, The Population Bomb, a NYT best-seller by Paul Ehrlich, really sealed our doom.

[SeekAndFind]

[Deo volente]

I recall reading these books as a young, ignorant college student. They were all the rage back then. In addition, my Dad worked for an oil company so that made things a bit more tense than usual. He thought the whole thing was nonsense. He was right of course.

[RayChuang88]

Unfortunately, the Club of Rome forgot one thing: the march of technology. Thanks to fracking and injection of CO2 gas, high-pressure steam and special detergent fluids into oil wells, we can turn supposedly uneconomic oil fields into moneymakers. That's how North Dakota became a major oil producer and Texas was able to exploit the Permian Basin.

[Signalman]

Whatever the left predicts,,,believe the opposite.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Concluding paragraphs from the news source "American Thinker" :

"When we were still here in the year 2000, just throw in Al Gore receiving the Nobel Prize and telling us 2020 is the new Armageddon date.
Then as 2020 passed we have the sad spectacle of children like Greta telling us, “this time it’s definitely gonna happen by 2032.”

"And so it goes with this latest UN Climate Report, accompanied by hundreds of experts like John Kerry and Leo DiCaprio
circling the world in private jets to keep plunging us into fear."

"So, pick up a copy of Limits to Growth, published in 1972 and as a chaser Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb published in 1968.
…and wonder, just wonder, why after 50 years we still believe disaster is coming in just one more decade,
but this time, by God, we’ll get it right."

[GOPJ]

The report states we have only about twenty more years of oil out there, we are already at peak oil, which will then start to go downhill and the wells will run dry no matter how much we scramble to get more. There will be a final rush to pump one more drop of oil even if at the cost of twenty dollars a gallon, but that in turn will accelerate the depletion into a death spiral. Natural gas will not save us, as we turn to that source as oil runs out, we’ll deplete that as well. Again, a death spiral. Climate is the big one this report. Despite our feeble efforts to address the radical changes already taking place, the disaster will explode within ten to fifteen years, due in large part to the depletion of farmlands worldwide from the use of toxic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, soil exhaustion, and encroaching urban population. The results: famine, disease, and mass starvation then triggering political instability in which hundreds of millions will die.

Prognostications from over 50 years ago - from the same types of hysterics we see today - the 'Club of Rome' ...

We were blessed there were some people smart enough to see this crap was insane.. my father was in that group too.

[jdt1138]

The wall has been hit to GROWTH with about 99 million barrels a day being produced. The author of the post is pretty good but did not explain himself very well.

[logi_cal869]

Predicting the Demise of Oil Production by the 1990s?

Such nonsense was rooted in the scientific orthodoxy of 'fossil fuel' thinking rather than the true scientific study of Earth-renewable hydrocarbon lifecycles.

Use of the term 'fossil fuel' is egregiously wrong and a 'tell' into a person's motivations when it is not applied lazily.

It bears little resemblance to the cult of 'climate change', imho, nor to corporate and regulatory undermining of our resilience under continued growth.

I do believe that we are headed towards a major 'correction', but not for the reasons the globalists & cultists portend.