Malthus, Multinationals and the Club of Rome

In March 1.972, Denis and Donella Meadows published a book called The Limits to Growthb which, accompanied by a global publicity campaign, focussed attention onto what the authors considered were physical limits to the world's material 2 prosperity. Based on complex, but questionable , computer calculations, Limits to Growth predicted an energy-and-commodity-cum-pollution-and-population crisis in the next thirty to fifty years. Remarkably, a crisis seemed to appear in less than two years. In fact, the oil companies were preparing some sort of crisis loiig before Limits appeared. Determined not to repeat the 'refinery glut' of the early sixties which led to a reduction in the price of oil (and, incidentally, the formation of OPEC as a reaction of the oil producing states) the oil companies invested their profits into anything but refineries, as has been documented by Ridgeway.3 The 'energy crisis' in the United States preceded Limits by several years, apparently being initiated as the result of a US Supreme Court decision in 1968 refusing to allow the proclucing companies a price increase for natural