Isn't Paul Erlich the guy who, in 1968, predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s due to overpopulation?
Other Ehrlich scenarios (he gets prickly nowadays if you call them "predictions", as well he might):
"Smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles, claiming of the order of 200,000 lives.
U.S. life expectancy falling to 42 years by 1980.
All "important animal life" (whatever that means) in the oceans being extinct by 1980.
Why anyone still pays attention to this chucklehead is a mystery to me.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
And in fact air pollution kills about 7 million people per year.
https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning...
He can be counted on for reliably projecting the worst case scenario if nothing changes. If something changes he pats himself on the back for saving the world by sounding the alarm and does it again.
This doesn't mean that he should be entirely ignored as an idiot. But it does mean that his projections should be doubted.
(If human beings achieve relativistic spaceflight and start colonizing the universe, would more advanced beings see this as a sphere of writhing humanity expanding into the universe at (some fraction of) the speed of light, then come and squash us as a pestilence?)
The EPA is a U.S. government agency. It had (and has) no authority in the Third World countries that were the subject of Ehrlich's most extreme "scenarios".
This was a big topic on many minds back in the late-60s to late-70s, because if growth would have continued exponentially, we'd all be very much more screwed today. What else falls in the time window, popular attention to "The Limits to Growth", "Peak Oil", and introduction of China's one-child policy.
As often, historical context I think aids perspective =)
Pretty much the same kind of mistake Malthus made. Exponential growth will eventually change the conditions that enabled the exponential growth. One of these changes in a human societal context will be the formation of an opportunity for people to get rich by solving the problem. Malthus didn't take this into account.
He predicted ice-free arctic summers by 2014. We are not quite there yet -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#/media/...
He did not predict that ice caps would be gone by now.
It turns out the Clean Air Act was passed in 1955. Not even a blip on the radar. Then in the 60s they amended it significantly to apply to motor vehicles. Not even a blip on the radar.
Basically, the Clean Air Act doesn't seem to have done one iota of good with regards to total global greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore nothing for Global Warming. Mostly it has helped move dirty jobs overseas.
The 'all' was an exaggeration, but if herring fishing in the North Sea wasn't completely stopped from 1977 to 1983, herring likely would have become extinct there, fishermen would have moved to other species, and things likely would have ended disastrously.
Also, to this day, the EU limits the amount of fish caught in its waters because, unregulated, the North Sea would have long been effectively empty of cod, herring, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Fisheries_Policy)
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-01/why-paul-...
It's difficult to imagine a similar possibility for wild populations, short of humans using much less land area.
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate
I guess you could argue that because he's demonstrated that he can't perfectly predict the future, we shouldn't pay attention to anything he says, but in that case we shouldn't pay attention to anyone.
The current global demand for beef has led to massive deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest in order to plant soy crops... just to feed cows.
We might be able to sustain our population at the current size but I doubt our consumptive habits will be maintainable.
Found the commie-pinko bleeding-heart liberal! Economic theory says that nothing bad can ever happen so long as demand increases, and the economy grows! /s
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
It's a fun read (of a hopefully fictional story), but I would seriously doubt the qualifications of any such "economist" had they replied in the same manner in real life.
It should, however, be noted that Economics is a fairly young science, so people trained in the 20th century maybe be stuck in their obsolete growth mindsets forever. Unfortunately there seems to be little hope to change their minds, so we should all do our best to ignore them, since their views no longer represent reality when you consider the newest data.
"then GDP continues to grow while energy remains at a fixed scale. This means that energy—a physically-constrained resource, mind—must become arbitrarily cheap as GDP continues to grow and leave energy in the dust.
Economist: Yes, I think energy plays a diminishing role in the economy and becomes too cheap to worry about."
This inaccurately conflates two concepts - decoupling economic growth from energy (we see this in computing, as you carry an 80s supercomputer in your pocket) and the cost of fixed resources in a growing economy.
A necessary, fixed resource increases in cost as GDP increases. That is, if there are only 100 works by van Gogh, and the available cash goes for $100 to $100,000,000, people will be willing to pay more $ for the fixed set of van Gogh works.
The cost of the fixed resource depends on the economic efficiency of that resource, and may go up or down as a percentage of GDP. Limits to energy efficiency hypothesized in the article would suggest that energy costs would go UP as a percentage of GDP (and inescapable energy demands would thus form the limit of economic growth).