Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction

A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization - and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news

At a UN sustainability meeting several years ago, an economic policy officer came up to Gaya Herrington and introduced himself. Taking her name for a riff on James Lovelock's earth-as-an-organism Gaia hypothesis, he remarked: Gaya - that's not a name, it's responsibility."

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss thinktank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was - apparently - right on time.