paul ehrlich

Doomsters warned of End Times from overpopulation. Now *fewer* people are disastrous.

Summary: Population change remains a favorite topic for doomsters, providing clicks for the news media and thrills for news consumers. For 5 decades we have heard about the standing room only days coming soon for Earth. That’s become a tired story, so they’ve devised a new one…   The rapid rise in population has not …

Doomsters warned of End Times from overpopulation. Now *fewer* people are disastrous. Read More »

World in our hands

Looking at natural resources as limits to growth

Summary:  Previous posts about the future of economic growth in America have examined the drivers of growth. Today we look at the most commonly cited barrier to growth: a future scarcity of natural resources. Contents Doom by the year 2000 Predictions of resource scarcity Reality of ample supplies Why have we not run out? For …

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Recovering lost knowledge about exhaustion of the Earth’s resources (such as Peak Oil)

Summary:  One of the saddest aspects of the Internet is that it so often fails to make us smarter.  In a mutant version of Gresham’s Law, loud amateurs too-often drown out the voices of experts.  Here we an excerpt from a 1975 book that tells us more about Peak Oil than a typical dozen posts …

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