anti-column JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE SELLING SPACE text by JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE In 1970, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) approached the Club of Rome, a group of scientists and economists from 52 countries, and commissioned a report on the limits to growth in a finite world. The results of this unprecedentedly broad study, known as the “The Limits to Growth,” were submitted in 1972. The conclusions were clear: rapid growth in the world’s population and economy would lead to pollution, energy shortage, and increasing inequality in the 21st century. This was the first report to end the myth of permanent growth and infinite resources. The planetary system would cease to be viable by about 2050. This is not recent news. Everyone knows it, but nobody wants to believe it. Back then, at the microcosmic level, Western youth were to be found in the close, foreboding atmosphere of mosh pits, with…