Why did broad swathes of the population react so sharply to the alarmist utterances of scientists and the media? Part of the explanation could lie in the fact that the climate alarmism and doom-mongering conjure up archetypal images which occupy an important place in western civilization: apocalyptical visions which have reappeared in new forms down the centuries. The earliest known examples of this are perhaps the predictions in the Book of Revelations. These describe how the world will be consumed in flames. In times past, various authors, including Plato and Aristotle, have also painted overpopulation as a threat to mankind. Later, in the second century after Christ, Tertullius, who lived in Cartage, wrote on the same theme. If we jump forward in time, a warning about the same danger was issued by Giovanni Botero, a 16th century Italian scholar. He was followed two centuries later by Thomas Malthus in his famous Essay on Population (1798). Of more recent date is the first report to the Club of Rome by Dennis Meadows et al, The Limits to Growth , in which physical limits to growth are predicted which were supposed to lead to all sorts of catastrophes around 2000. The receptiveness of the public to this doom-mongering is intensified yet further by the religious concept of sin and guilt felt by many, as well as a rejection of hedonism with its materialism and consumerism, and the contrast between the world s poor and rich.

What all these predictions have in common...