isolated; which is perhaps another way of saying that

we can never interpret technical change in purely

technical terms.

 Yet, if our technology (whatever causes it) does

 not improve at an increasing rate, we are--according to

 the Club of Rome--headed for disaster. For them, the

 disaster will come about through a deteriorating

 relation between five principal growth related factors

 (population, industrial production, pollution, food

 production, and resource depletion).

 Continued rates of growth in population, they

 say, could exhaust the remaining supplies of arable land.

 Increasing production might generate enough pollutants

 to kill-off a large part of the world's human population,

 due to delayed and persistent effects on the environment;

 or resource depletion might bring about industrial

 collapse. Any of these influences taken singly or

 together could spell the doom of mankind. The basis of

 the problem, as formulated, lay in exponentially

 expanding population and industrial growth.

 It is our belief that the Club of Rome predictions

are gloomier than they need be. Obviously, we are in

danger in economics of swinging from extensive optimism

to extensive pessimism. The basic weakness of the Rome

study on The Limits of Growth is that it is based on the

belief that present trends will continue. Once we

project exponential rates of growth into the future