Those with excessive optimism about limits have been called ‘cornucopian’ and the over-pessimistic ‘Cassandras’ (Cotgrove, 1982). Critics of the warnings find data and modelling faulty; the Club of Rome was accused of ‘crying wolf’, and it is held up as a case of a situation where applying the precautionary principle in 1972 and freezing 30 growth would have caused huge poverty and probably famine.