It's also a mystery that could kill the human species eventually, if they don't kill each other first.
Earth has very limited resources as our populations steadily increase. Eventually, Earth will be completely overcrowded and it's resources depleted. If the human race doesn't start cracking some of those mysteries, the human race will be doomed within the next thousand years or so.
A couple of generations of cannibalism would go a long way to reducing the pressure.
He was all of the above. He was also well known for his 1980 wager with Stanford University ecologist Paul Erlich that the prices of natural resources would fall because resources would not be depleted, and because any higher costs would lead to alternatives or searches for new supplies. Erlich bet that the cost of the resources would increase because they would become more scarce. In 1990, Erlich paid Simon $576.07, the amount the prices of five resources had fallen in 10 years.
Excerpts from Simon’s obituaries painted a portrait of a complex, unconventional, and controversial thinker.
Associated Press: “Simon believed that human beings, with their imagination and spirit, are the ultimate resource. His writings challenge more widely held beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution, and the effects of overpopulation.”
The Washington Post: “... an iconoclast population economist who challenged conventional thinking with his predictions that world populations and standards of living could increase simultaneously and infinitely. ... He insisted there is no conclusive proof of serious ozone depletion, acid rain, or greenhouse warming or that extinction of species is increasing.
“‘The doomsayers have been wrong for 25 years,’ he wrote in a 1995 essay. ‘Every measure of material human welfare in the world has improved rather than deteriorated.’ ...
“To many environmentalists and ecologists, Dr. Simon’s arguments were worse than nonsense. They fostered complacency in the face of impending crises of overpopulation and dwindling natural resources.”
The New York Times: “His views, generally optimistic about the benefits humans bring to the planet and about man’s prospects for the future, were widely debated. ... He argued that mankind would rise to any challenges and problems by devising new technologies to not only cope, but thrive. ... Mr. Simon’s views were widely contested by a large coterie of the academic and scientific community, many of whose members believe that more people create more problems, straining the earth and its resources in the process. ...
“‘Fortunately for this planet,’ Mr. Simon said in response to the Global 2000 Report, ‘these gloomy assertions about resources and environment are baseless.’”
Stephen Rosenfeld, The Washington Post: “He felt there was a cultural conspiracy to protect and praise the theoreticians of early resource exhaustion, explosive population growth, imminent mass starvation and choking chemical pollution. Meanwhile, fact-oriented scholars, as he considered himself, were widely dismissed as agents of a mindless, profit-driven right wing. ...
“Due to people like Julian Simon, a noticeable dent has been made in a largely unspoken assumption that underlines one tendency of environmental appreciation, namely, that man in general and perhaps capitalist man in particular are flawed creatures who lack full respect for their precious natural inheritance. ...
“The bitterness of the battle between doomsayers and doomslayers has alternately amused and turned off the public. Many people come to the Malthusian question looking not to enlist in a cultural war but simply to understand things better. Julian Simon had a certainty to his judgments — the family obituary declared that his 30 years of forecasts had been ‘completely borne out by events’ — that did not exactly encourage discussion.”
Erlich- Simon Bet on the price of five non-renewable resources
One of the reasons that ZPG has received a tarnished reputation is due to some of the doomsday predictions of Paul Erlich, founder of ZPG and author of "The Population Bomb." Among other things, Erlich predicted world-wide famine and rising prices of energy and metals before the turn of the century. Julian Simon (author of "Population Matters" and "The Ultimate Resource") made a $1,000 bet with Erlich that the real price of non-renewable resources (five metals) would fall between 1970 and 1980. Simon won the bet and challenged Erlich to another bet. Erlich did not renew the bet (this indicates his own confidence in predictions had declined). Simon's predictions about human welfare for the year 2000 appear more accurate that Erlich's predictions. For instance, we now have more known oil reserves than we did in 1970! In part due to winning the bet, Julian Simon earned the nickname "doomslayer."
South- Simon Bet on the price of one renewable resource
Julian Simon believed population growth benefits the human race and that there is no inherent "carrying capacity" for humans on this earth. He believed that human ability to solve problems would cause the price of all resources to decline in real dollars (thus improving the welfare of all humans). Before his death in February of this year, Simon said the real price of ALL natural resources has declined over time. Since this statement was not true for sawtimber, I challenged Simon to a $1,000 bet. We bet on the future price of pine sawtimber stumpage in south Alabama (details of the bet can be found at: www.forestry.auburn.edu/sfnmc/web/bet.html
Soon after we made the bet, Simon began to doubt that he would win. Historical data from Simon's own book indicated a real increase in sawtimber price over the last century. He decided that to protect his reputation, he should withdraw from the bet. After a little more than a year into the bet, Simon sent me a check for $1,000. While this bet does not prove anything about future price trends, it does show that nobody has 20/20 vision when it comes to predicting the future. Not even the "doomslayer" has a perfect record when it comes to betting against doomsayers.
“If the human race doesn't start cracking some of those mysteries, the human race will be doomed within the next thousand years or so.”
I didn’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t learn as much as possible. I personally would like to see cheap “Startrek” type travel in my lifetime. I was referring to discovering the ultimate First Cause of the Universe.