False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet

by Bjørn Lomborg

The Club came up with a report, The Limits to Growth, which was so influential that it was discussed in magazines from Time to Playboy, scrutinized by the commentariat, and seized upon by campaigners for radical change. The report had special appeal to the media—and apparent extra intellectual heft—because it was based on computer simulations, which were then revolutionary and ultramodern. Applying these, the scientists predicted with great confidence that gold would run out by 1979, along with a huge range of important resources that humanity depends on—aluminum, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten, and zinc would run out before 2004.27 Spoiler Alert: They were spectacularly wrong. Consider just the four most important resources. Since 1946, technology has made more copper, aluminum, iron, and zinc available than we have consumed, and commodity prices have generally fallen. Oil was supposed to run out in 1990, according to these thinkers and their computer simulations, and natural gas in 1992, but reserves for both are actually larger today than in 1970, although we consume dramatically more of each.