He (Ehrlich) seems to have somewhat shifted his argument away from humans starving to death (by the year 2000 at the latest according to his seminal book the Population Bomb) per see to a generalized “mass extinction” “unsustainable consumption” event(s) precipitated by increased human numbers/affluence.
“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate. Biologist Paul Erlich says that our current way of life is unsustainable.”
Which is quite a bit different than saying the “battle to feed humanity is over” (and we lost).
When your called on your wrong predictions than just re-define them; your admirers won’t call you on it and you can just ignore your detractors.
It is interesting how the admirers keep trotting out the same failed predictions and claiming it’s going to happen for real this time. For example:
The inexorable strain put on Earth’s life support system by human population growth can be illustrated by considering how many additional person years are ultimately caused when a person has children. The demographic legacy of a woman (or man) can be thought of as one half of the years lived by her children, plus one fourth of the years lived by her grandchildren, and so on, until her lineage dies out.
Based on analysis of the 2005 demographic data for the world’s ten most populous countries, the average number of person years added per child ranges from 136 (Nigeria, where fertility is high but life expectancy is short) to 470 (United States). In the United States, where female life expectancy is around 80 years, each child results, on average, in almost six (470 divided by 80) additional lifetimes spent on Earth over ensuing generations.
In Nigeria, if we really were using the above metric, their “average number of person years” metric would be infinite because women are adding more than two children per, counting mortality rates and that life expectancy. Can’t justify the Population Bomb by rational approaches, so they have to come up with fake measures and then screw those up with bad math.
He (Ehrlich) on the subject of running out of resources had a series of bets with Julian Simon:
The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich’s published claim that “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000” Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, “to stake US$10,000 … on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run.”
“Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.[1]”
Said bet along unfortunately with Julian Simon (RIP) has largely been buried by history; doubt if Scott Pelley ever heard about it.
I spoke with Pelley a few times when he was a lowly Texas-based reporter for the network. Those were the days when I would cold-call reporters to promote what later became known as New Space. He actually seemed open-minded about the matter.
I guess some people just become dumber with time…
Krugman is the Paul Ehrlich of economics, and Paul Ehrlich is the Krugman of gloom and doom predictions. Both are wrong more often than a broken clock.
They’re wrong as long as they aren’t in charge. Give them enough power to do self-fulfilling prophesies and the game changes.
“They’re wrong as long as they aren’t in charge. Give them enough power to do self-fulfilling prophesies and the game changes.”
Yes. Imagine someone back in the day (or now) in charge of global food distribution at the UN maybe who (fanatically) believes in Ehrlich’s the population bomb. So when the food shortages/mass starvation inevitably start happening under their deliberately inept leadership they would merely throw up their hands and say “well what do you expect? Read the population bomb I am not a magician..”
He (Ehrlich) seems to have somewhat shifted his argument away from humans starving to death (by the year 2000 at the latest according to his seminal book the Population Bomb) per see to a generalized “mass extinction” “unsustainable consumption” event(s) precipitated by increased human numbers/affluence.
“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate. Biologist Paul Erlich says that our current way of life is unsustainable.”
Which is quite a bit different than saying the “battle to feed humanity is over” (and we lost).
When your called on your wrong predictions than just re-define them; your admirers won’t call you on it and you can just ignore your detractors.
It is interesting how the admirers keep trotting out the same failed predictions and claiming it’s going to happen for real this time. For example:
In Nigeria, if we really were using the above metric, their “average number of person years” metric would be infinite because women are adding more than two children per, counting mortality rates and that life expectancy. Can’t justify the Population Bomb by rational approaches, so they have to come up with fake measures and then screw those up with bad math.
He (Ehrlich) on the subject of running out of resources had a series of bets with Julian Simon:
Simon–Ehrlich wager
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich’s published claim that “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000” Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, “to stake US$10,000 … on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run.”
“Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.[1]”
Said bet along unfortunately with Julian Simon (RIP) has largely been buried by history; doubt if Scott Pelley ever heard about it.
I spoke with Pelley a few times when he was a lowly Texas-based reporter for the network. Those were the days when I would cold-call reporters to promote what later became known as New Space. He actually seemed open-minded about the matter.
I guess some people just become dumber with time…
Krugman is the Paul Ehrlich of economics, and Paul Ehrlich is the Krugman of gloom and doom predictions. Both are wrong more often than a broken clock.
They’re wrong as long as they aren’t in charge. Give them enough power to do self-fulfilling prophesies and the game changes.
“They’re wrong as long as they aren’t in charge. Give them enough power to do self-fulfilling prophesies and the game changes.”
Yes. Imagine someone back in the day (or now) in charge of global food distribution at the UN maybe who (fanatically) believes in Ehrlich’s the population bomb. So when the food shortages/mass starvation inevitably start happening under their deliberately inept leadership they would merely throw up their hands and say “well what do you expect? Read the population bomb I am not a magician..”