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How many people know that the Club of Rome's 1972 book "The Limits To Growth" compiled by Friends of the Earth, predicted that 2008 was the crunch point when a whole lot of our environmental challenges would hit us squarely between the eyes? Okay, there was a riposte called "Re-think" which soothed the troubled, soon-to-be-smashed brow. Our human genius would find ways of replacing our reliance on oil when finally we have extracted the last drop from beneath the earth - or above it in desert sands.The Club of Rome had used some very early computer technology to capture all the known data re earth's oil resources and then they multiplied the figure by five. Still they came up with 2008 as the date when depletion of prime energy resources will run out.

But this is not the "Friends" whole story. There are five factors, amongst which is oil, which together threaten to upset humanity's grip on what has seemed to be material progress. Five graphs were drawn, four of them showing a sharp upward direction. These were rising population figures, rising industrialization, rising monoculture (land use)and rising levels of what they called `thermal pollution' - today's greenhouse gases. The fifth graph showed falling supplies of earth's non-renewables, particularly energy resources.

The upward and downward lines of the graphs crossed in 2008.

Scare tactics, even that far back? The book's title, The Limits to Growth was also its suggested way of heading off a disaster that at the time was more than thirty years away. In a word, `equilibrium' was the cure. We should get back to labour intensive production, restore the dignity of labout, cut our consumerism, live simpler lives.

Energy resources other than oil have been researched and developed: wind, water, solar power, nuclear power and so on. Somehow the other problems, shown in the four graphs' rising lines are not going away. Whatever alternative energy is used, we haven't found a way of defeating climate change which seems to result from our profiligacy and carelessness with the gifts that nature has bestowed upon us.

If oil as energy provider is to be replaced, we will have to find new science and technology to bend the rules of nature.

Learn more about this author, Diana Mitchell.
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