>>We are at the front edge of a demographic atomic bomb<<
Christ, Ray, you are out there in beautiful Oregon, in a pretty little town, surrounded by mountains, trees and lakes, and all you can do is write about the end of the world. You should get out more. Take up rock climbing again. Don't you realize that the World Wildlife Fund is a business, just like Enron, run by businesspeople whose product is fearmongering and factual misrepresentation?
This "population bomb" bs is just so thoroughly discredited now. For example, Paul Erlich, father of the overpopulation myth, has regularly predicted mass world starvation (among other catastrophes) ever since the early 1960s. Ehrlich confidently wrote in 1968 in The Population Bomb that there would be a major food shortage in the United States and that "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." He also claimed that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million, less than 10 percent of its actual population as of 1994. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989. He also thought that the oceans would be destroyed by 1979 and that fishing would collapse. For instance, he said that world fishing production in 1977 would be 30 million metric tons, whereas in reality it was 73 million metric tons, or well over twice what he predicted. Poor England fared even worse than the U.S. in Ehrlich's scenario: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Julian Simon, Population Matters (New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1990), pp. 364-365.
Far from there being a population crisis, most of the developed world (America excepted, with a 2.1 children/couple reproduction rate) is reproducing at less than the replacement rate. The third world is rapidly following on this trend towards smaller families.
Here's a lot more amusing stuff. I remember reading Gordon Rattray Taylor's book as a teenager. If I met him now, I'd laugh in his face.
The Limits to Growth, a popular doomsday book published in 1972, was considered to be a major work outlining the problem of resource depletion. Extrapolating from current trends, the authors attempted to show that the world was in dire danger of running out of virtually everything, and soon. The world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead, and natural gas by 1993. Donella Meadows et al., The Limits of Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: New American Library, 1972), pp. 64-67. Note Similarly, Gordon Rattray Taylor, in his appropriately named The Doomsday Book, extrapolated from the fact that North Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources in 1970 to conclude that "by 2000 they will, if permitted, be using all of them." Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Doomsday Book (London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1970), p. 292. Note (Taylor also announced that "supplies of uranium at current prices . . . are expected to run out in the mid-1970s.")
The world has been expecting to run out of oil ever since oil was first put to use. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California. A few years later, in 1891, it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas! Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, p. 86.Note The U.S. Department of the Interior said in 1939 that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949 the Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of the U.S. supply of oil was in sight. In 1974, learning nothing from its past mistakes, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that "at 1974 technology and 1974 price" the United States had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The American Gas Association, on the other hand, disputed this, and said that natural gas supplies were sufficient for the next 1,000 to 2,500 years. Simon, Population Matters, p. 90.Note
In 1952 the U.S. President's Materials Policy Commission concluded that by the mid-1970s copper production in the States could not exceed 800,000 tons and that lead production would be at most 300,000 tons per year. But copper production in 1973 was 1.6 million tons, and by 1974 lead production had reached 614,000 tons, i.e. 100 percent higher than predicted. Osterfeld, Prosperity Versus Planning, pp. 85-86.Note
And more: It has become so clear that mineral resources aren't being depleted that even some environmental groups have conceded the fact. The World Resource Institute estimates that the average price of all metals and minerals actually fell 40 percent between 1970 and 1988. Ronald Bailey, Eco-Scam (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 67.Note Even the leading doomster, Paul Ehrlich, was forced to concede that his predictions were in error when he accepted a bet with Julian Simon. Ehrlich has continually attacked Simon and demeaned him as a serious scholar, referring to his views as "examples of the sort of blunders... economists of his ilk commit when they attempt to deal with problems of pollution, resources and environment." Julian Simon, Population Matters, p. 369.Note In the midst of a heated exchange of papers between the two Simon flung down the gauntlet. He wrote: "I'll put my money where my mouth is. This is a public offer to stake $10,000, in separate transactions of $1,000 or $100 each, on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run. If you will pay me the current market price of $1000 or $100 worth of any standard mineral or other extractive product you name, and specify any date more than a year away, I will contract to pay you the then-current market price of the material. How about it, doomsayers and catastrophists? First come, first served." Ehrlich promptly responded that he would "accept Simon's astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in." When the contract was drawn up, it differed from Simon's original version only in a few details: In October 1980, Ehrlich and Simon drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Ehrlich the same quantities which could be purchased for $1,000 of five metals (copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten) ten years later at 1980 prices. If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon. Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990. Simply put, the combined real prices of the metals selected by Ehrlich fell by more than 50 percent during the 1980s, confirming cornucopian claims that the supply of resources is becoming more abundant, not more scarce. Bailey, Eco-Scam, pp. 53-54.Note Simon offered to renew the wager, but this time Ehrlich denounced the wager as a gimmick and refused to take part. |
