From other articles I have read the Club of Rome's predictions have
been quite accurate. Resources are starting to present themselves as
a problem that will have to be tackled.
Rome declined because the silver mines in Spain were being worked out
and the slaves had become too expensive to work those mines and the
Italian farmland. To make matters worse the Arab & Nth African slave
traders had decimated the Roman sea trading ships forcing Roman
merchants onto expensive and slow land transport.
The slave traders raids on the European mainland forced up the price of slaves.

Rome did not decline because of material shortages. However we are
facing a longer term decline ourselves, in that at some time in the
future both oil and coal will become too expensive to mine.
Peak crude oil occurred in 2005 and we have been kept going by the
resurrection of the old technique of fracking. We got ten years relief
there but the warnings are that the shale, ie tight oil, companies are
all running at a loss.
Heed Royal Dutch Shell's CEO warning last year that his company is
planning its way out of the oil industry.
It looks like the energy industry will be the bellwether for all
industry.
I doubt I will see much of it but I can hear that tinkling bell

"What is this “trashing the P-plater” rubbish? The roads and everything on it are at the disposal of humans for their survival and betterment. Suter would have us believe that we are all vandal drivers at intersections. He is, of course, a paragon of virtue, fully justified in sneering at and running down everyone else. "

anyone prepared to do a little research on the club of rome will see how pathetically wrong past predictions from the 1970's were. No apologies, no money back just dig in with more idiotic predictions using pseudo science to justify outrageous claims.

The lessons from Rome should be taken into account. The moral degradation with the promotion of homosexuality and paedophille which is far more likley to see society collapse than the imaginery man made gw.

When it`s all gone it`s all gone.
And ttbn`s mythological creator won`t be able to do much at all......
After all he`s/she`s done nothing yet.

Thank you, Keith Suter - voice of reason and common sense.

About "gross domestic product" -GDP. It is a flawed measurement, as it includes activities such as the clean-up of an oil spill as a part of the GDP. But such clean-ups after an environmental disaster are not really a "positive" product.

A better measure would be Gross National Well-being" - like the measurement used in Bhutan - Gross National Happiness

Ah Bhutan! We all want to be like Bhutan - look at the huge illegal immigrant problem they have. ;-) Sorry couldn't help myself. In one sense I agree with you that GDP is imperfect, but I haven't seen a workable proposal to improve it. You say that cleaning-up an environmental mess shouldn't go into the GDP figures, but where would you stop? Would maintenance qualify, or only maintenance that resulted from non-criminal activity, or activity someone deemed as ethical?

Beauty of GDP is that it can be measured accurately, and by not making exceptions we are sure we are comparing like with like. And if there is growth in GDP that can only happen if there are more productive rather than unproductive things happening in the economy. While a lot of activity is just churn or redistribution, there is also real growth.

Arbitrarily removing some measures from the GDP because we don't approve of the activity is going to make it impossible to measure the activity accurately and longitudinally. As for measuring happiness accurately - good luck with that.