I missed it on Earth Day. But the folks over at the Master Resource blog reprinted Julian Simon's "Happy Earth Day" letter from 1995. Julian was a great economist who always knew that man is "the ultimate resource" (which inciddentally was the title of one of his books). Julian is most famous for winning a bet from congenital doomsayer Paul Ehrlich on the scarcity of various resources.
I've noted before that it says something sad about humankind that optimists who are consistently right, such as Julian, are given less respect and acclaim than pessimists who are often wrong, such as Ehrlich.
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4 comments:
Ehrlich and Malthus were not wrong, they were merely early.
We’ve already exceeded global carrying capacity. We are now in “overshoot”. (Visualize a car sailing smoothly, but quite temporarily, through the air after having been driven off of a cliff.)
Global population is nearing 7 billion. Different theorists using different methods seem to end up agreeing that global carrying capacity is probably about 2 billion. (This assumes some level of social justice and a moderate, low by US standards, standard of living. More is possible if you accept a cattle car / Matrix-esque "life".)
In any case, we will get to that much-lower-than-7-billion number the hard way (wars, famine, disease, and their accompanying losses of environmental quality, freedom, and social justice) OR the less hard way (immediately and drastically reducing our population voluntarily). Yes, all of us, yes, everywhere. There is no scenario anywhere in which population growth is a "good thing" long term.
Yes a drop in population would cause problems, but none of those problems are as big as the problems, suffering, and environmental collapse that is certain to occur if we don’t.
I disagree with any argument that there is some “right to reproduce”. If there is any "right to reproduce" it's in the concept that one has the freedom to nurture a child or children and form some sort of family. Biological reproduction is not necessary to do that and there are many in need of this sort of nurturing. I would also argue that there is no right to cause suffering to others, now or on into the future, and that is exactly what having babies does.
This is a global issue with local and nation-state consequences. For example, immigration is a consequence of overpopulation, not a cause of it. Likewise, global climate change and the collapse of ocean fisheries are not impressed by national boundaries.
No technological / "alternative energy" options have the capacity or can be ramped up fast enough to avoid major global calamity. That isn't to say we shouldn't do them. Aggressively shifting to alternative energy is necessary, just not sufficient.
For more comprehensive analysis of all this I suggest
Bandura etc.
http://growthmadness.org/2008/02/18/impeding-ecological-sustainability-through-selective-moral-disengagement/
Albert Bartlett on the exponential function as it relates to population and oil:
http://c-realm.blogspot.com/2008/12/kmo-interview-with-albert-bartlett.html
Approaching the Limits www.paulchefurka.ca
Bruce Sundquist on environmental impact of overpopulation http://home.alltel.net/bsundquist1/
How Many People Should The Earth Support? http://www.ecofuture.org/pop/rpts/mccluney_maxpop.html
Video short on exponential growth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2rTQpdyCFQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fin-gods-name.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F03%2Ftoo-many-people-too-much-consumption-by.html&feature=player_embedded
Carrying Capacity
http://iere.org/ILEA/leaf/richard2002.html
The Oil Drum Peak Oil Overview - June 2007 (www.theoildrum.com/node/2693)
...and of course the classic "Overshoot" by Catton
No, Ehrlich made specific predictions and was wrong.
William Miller predicted that Jesus Christ will return to the earth between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Many people believed that prediction.
But he was wrong, and if one day Jesus does return to the earth, it won't make Miller early. It will make him wrong.
The overpopulation myth myth
Take a look at commodity price curves over the last thirty years. The bet was meaningless. He would have won it had he simply picked a time when prices were going up, which also would not have proved anything.
Population dynamics are real. We could have eliminated poverty long ago if there were only 2 billion instead of 6.7. Poor people are too busy staying alive to contribute solutions to our problems.
Overpopulation number one problem?
Here's a non-Malthusian explanation for rising commdity prices.
http://mises.org/story/2773
Simon was and is correct about the myth of overpopulation, but he may have been too optimistic about good government policy.
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