The Limits to Growth
The 1972 book "The Limits to Growth" discussed the limits to growth of society as a whole. This book included a computer-based model which predicted that the Earth would reach a carrying capacity of ten to fourteen billion people after some two hundred years, after which the human population would collapse. The model was based on five variables: "population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources". This simulation modelled human populations after the overshoot and collapse seen in yeast cells in a petri dish. It was highly controversial and generally dismissed by economists.