Reading history: comment on Chenoweth and Feitelson

While Chenoweth and Feitelson have done a service to the futures community by comparing the Global 2000 Report with The Resourceful Earth-two important books of the late 1970s/early 1980s-their comparison is flawed in three dimensions: (1) they treat the books as though they were intended to be accurate predictions of the future. Their intention, instead, was to influence public policy in certain, often contrasting, directions; (2) by using in 2000 the same data sources the two books used in the 1970s (rather than better data sources available now, but not then), the authors' comparative conclusions are often flawed; and (3) in spite of this, their own conclusions often do not seem to follow from the comparative data they present: using only the data the two authors present, The Resourceful Earth does not appear to have been more 'accurate' in 'predicting' the year 2000 than was the Global 2000 report.