Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals --chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined. An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser.Thanks neverdem.
June 30, 2008
In 1968, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a synthesis of scientific research and personal observations that offered a disturbing account of a world with too many people and too little food. The book was a national bestseller. Now 40 years later, Ehrlich, still at Stanford, and his wife, Anne, have come out with a new book, The Dominant Animal, in which they seek to explain how man’s rapid rise to dominance has spawned a series of interlinked woes: soaring energy demand, agriculture crises, and, above all, environmental degradation. No longer, the Ehrlichs argue, can these issues be viewed as independent of one another, nor will a single response suffice as a remedy. U.S. News recently spoke with Paul Ehrlich. Excerpts:
You say that our energy supply is adequate. So what’s the problem?
“We’re not running out of fossil fuels—we’re running out of environment. We could go a long time if we could just burn up fossil fuels and dump the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We’d be in good shape at least for long enough to carefully consider our future. But when you see what’s happening with the climate, you realize we can’t do that. One of my colleagues went to Norway recently. She said it was horrendous to see global warming actually in action. Almost all the lakes they used to ice skate across in summer are gone. Everything is just melted. We don’t have the time to continue what we’re doing now and hope to change later...
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/06/30/we-are-running-out-of-environment.html
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