Evironmental Doomsayers

Next week is Earth Day which means this weekend we are going to hear a fair amount of doom and gloom about the environment and its future. As an antidote to all of this negativity, it might be worth remembering a famous environmental bet.

Back in 1980 Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich was predicting massive food shortages by 1990. In a previous decade he had predicted “famines of unbelievable proportions” by 1975. He predicted that “hundreds of millions of people starving to death” in the 1970s and 1980s. When he looked to the future, he saw nothing but doom and gloom.

Julian Simon had enough of this environmental Cassandra and so challenged him to put his money where his mouth was. He ignored Ehrlich’s claim that: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Simon suggested that Ehrlich pick any raw material (copper, tin, whatever) and then select any date in the future (more than a year away). Simon bet that the commodity’s price on that date would be lower than what it was at the time of the wager.

Paul Ehrlich consulted with experts and ended up picking five metals (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten). Then they used September 1980 as the index and September 1990 as the payoff date. From 1980 to 1990 the world’s population grew significantly, but the price of the basket of metals fell. Not only did the price of the basket decline, but the price of each of the five metals declined. Simon won. On October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check to settle the wager.

Oh, I might add one more fact to the story. One of the experts Paul Ehrlich consulted in picking the five metals was John Holdren. Today is President Obama’s science advisor. One wonders if his environmental predictions will be any more accurate than they were in 1980.

Environmentalists today remind me of economists who are known for having predicted 25 of the last 2 recessions. This weekend we will hear a great deal from environmental doomsayers. A little skepticism is warranted. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.