Dick Taverne, in his review of James Gustave Speth's recent book Red Sky at Morning, comments about a “wildly inaccurate” 1972 report by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): “The Limits to Growth predicted that we would run out of gold, zinc, mercury and oil before 1992” (“When greens see red”, Nature 432, 443–444; 2004). This is a very common myth which needs correction.