Are Simon and Lomborg Right about the Global Environmental Crsxis?

Question for Discussion: Whose position, Simon, Lomborg, Daly, or Lewis, on the Global Environmental Crisis and the Future do you agree with?

Readings: Simon, "Life on Earth is Getting Better
not Worse"; Daly, "Review of The Ultimate
Resource" ; Pope and Lomborg, "The State of Nature;
Lewis, Global Problems not being Solved by Globalization" ;

Is Life on Earth Getting Better?

Julian Simon: The Doomslayer (in-class)
Global 2000 Report Overview (in-class)
The Global 2000 Report Revisited (in-class)
Stephen Moore: Julian Simon RIP
Julian Simon's Basic Economic Argument
(in-class)
Simon: LIfe on Earth is Getting Better not Worse
(in-class)
Simon: Introduction to The State of Humanity
Julian Simon: Introduction to theState of Humanity (in-class):
use for comparison between Global 2000 and Simon's view
Herman Daly: Review of The Ultimate Resource
(in-class)
Grant: The Cornucopian Fallacies (in-class)
Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001)
(in-class)
Simon's Logical Fallacies
Julian Simon's Major Logical Fallacies:
A Guide to Faulty Economic Reasoning
(by Chris Lewis, Ph.D.) (in-class)
CATALOGUE OF Lomborg ERRORS from
The Skeptical Environmentalist (in-class)
The Limits of Economic Reasoning and Projections:
Government limits and balances the Market
(in-class)
Global Problems not being Solved by Globalization
Scientific Assessment of the Health of
the Global Environment (in-class)

Julian Simon's Economic Optimism

Julian Simon: Doomslayer
Herman Daly on Julian Simon's
The Ultimate Resource (in-class)
Judy Cox: What State are We Really In? (in-class)
Al Bartlett: The New Flat Earth Society:
Review of Julian Simon's Arguments (in-class)
Julian Simon: Introduction to the
State of Humanity

The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001)

Bjorn Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) (in-class)
Lomborg: The Environmental Litany and Data
(in-class)
The Skeptical Environmentalist Offers hope
for the Human Condition (in-class)
Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark
(in-class)
Scientific American: Misleading Math about the Earth (in-class)
Peter Gleick review of The Skeptical Environmentalist (in-class)
The Lomberg Errors website (in-class)
.......................................................................................

Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark

"Lomborg, an associate professor of statistics at Denmark's University of Aarhus, applies the doctrine of doubt to environmentalism and concludes that most of the movement's sacred cows are, to put it bluntly, bull:

"We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials, or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life. ... Nor is waste a particularly big problem. ... The problem of the ozone layer has been more or less solved. The current outlook on the development of global warming does not indicate a catastrophe. ... And, finally, our chemical worries and fear of pesticides are misplaced and counterproductive."

Lomborg claims that these and other worries are "phantom problems" created or inflated by the environmental movement for its own ends, with the result that time and money are diverted from other, needier causes

The Limits of Economic Reasoning and Projections

Like Thomas Friedman, Julian Simon tends to trust the market and "the magic of the market" to solve social, political, and economic problems. Short-term and in very simplistic situations this tends to work out. But long-term and in very complicated situations,
involving difficult choices, the market can't be trusted to solve these problems in a way that best suits the needs of individuals, families, communities, and nations. We have"mixed economies" in which the government regulates and limits certain market choices for the
long-term good of individuals, families, communites, and nations. In democratic socities, we expect our governments to regulate and control the markets so that
they protect both the short-term and long-term interests of all those involved. In other words, what is good for General Motors isn't always good for Americans. We trust our governments to balance out competing interests, so that both the young and the old, the rich and the poor, and the strong and the weak are all protected.
If the magic of the market could be trusted to solve all these problems we would be a much better society than we are. But, in the real world, these critical decisions are made by political compromises in our democratic societies. That is what people really mean when they say that "politics is the art of the possible."
Chris H. Lewis, Ph.D.

Scientific Assessment of the Health
of the Global Environment

Is Life on Earth Getting Better?

Krugman, "The Widening Gyre"
Global Problems not being Solved by Globalization
Scientific Assessment of the Health of
the Global Environment (in-class)
Facts & Figures About the Future
Julian Simon: The Doomslayer (in-class)
Global 2000 Report Overview (check)
The Global 2000 Report Revisited (in-class)
Stephen Moore: Julian Simon RIP (in-class)
Julian Simon's Economic Optimism
Julian Simon's Basic Economic Argument
(in-class)
Simon: LIfe on Earth is Getting Better not Worse
(in-class)
Simon: Introduction to The State of Humanity
(in-class)
Herman Daly: Review of The Ultimate Resource
(in-class)
Grant: The Cornucopian Fallacies (in-class)
Judy Cox: What State are We Really In? (in-class)
Al Bartlett: The New Flat Earth Society:
Review of Julian Simon's Arguments (in-class)
Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001)
(in-class)
Simon's Logical Fallacies
Julian Simon's Major Logical Fallacies:
A Guide to Faulty Economic Reasoning
(by Chris Lewis, Ph.D.) (in-class)
CATALOGUE OF Lomborg ERRORS from
The Skeptical Environmentalist (in-class)
Skepticism about Lomborg's
The Skeptical Environmentalist
Anti-Environmental Myths
The Limits of Economic Reasoning and Projections:
Government limits and balances the Market
(in-class)

Facts & Figures about the Future

Julian Simon: R.I.P. (1998)

JULIAN Simon nearly single-handedly routed the most prominent environmental scaremongers of our time: from the Club of Rome, to Al Gore. Simon's "doom-slayer" crusade began in the late 1970s during the era of energy crises, raging inflation, and global food shortages -- a time when we seemingly were all Malthusians. The declinism reached its nadir with the publication in 1980 of the Carter Administration's report "Global 2000," which predicted that "by the year 2000 the world will be more crowded, more polluted, and less stable ecologically and the world's people will be poorer in many ways than today." The only conceivable solution was coercive population control. It was all so depressing. And, as Simon taught us, it was all so wrong.

In 1981 Simon published his masterpiece, The Ultimate Resource, and then a year later The Resourceful Earth (co-written with Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute). Those books presented a vast arsenal of data on how life was getting better. Simon argued that we were not running out of food, water, oil, trees, clean air, or any other natural resource because throughout human history the price of natural resources had been declining. He showed that over time, the environment had been getting cleaner. He showed that the "population bomb" was a result of a massive global reduction in infant mortality rates and a stunning increase in life expectancy. If we place value on human life, Simon."

Stephen Moore, 1998

LIFE ON EARTH IS GETTING BETTER,
NOT WORSE

by Julian Simon (The Futurist, August, 1983)

"If we lift our gaze from the frightening daily
headlines and look instead at wide-ranging
scientific data as well as the evidence of our
senses, we shall see that economic life in
the United States and the rest of the world has
been getting better rather than worse during
recent centuries and decades. There is,
moreover, no persuasive reason to believe
that these trends will not continue indefinitely. "

"Life cannot be good unless you are alive.
Plentiful resources and a clean environment
have little value unless we and others are alive
to enjoy them. The fact that your chances of
living through any given age now are much
better than in earlier times must therefore
mean that life has gotten better."

"Health has improved, too. The incidence of
both chronic and acute conditions has declined.
While a perceived "epidemic" of cancer indicates
to some a drop in the quality of life, the data
show no increase in cancer except for deaths
due to smoking-caused lung cancer."

"Pollution in the less-developed countries is a
different, though not necessarily discouraging,
story. No worldwide pollution data are available.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that
pollution of various kinds has increased as poor
countries have gotten somewhat less poor.
Industrial pollution rises along with new factories...."

"But further increases in income almost surely
will bring about pollution abatement, just as
increases in income in the United States have
provided the wherewithal for better garbage
collection and cleaner air and water. "

"Though natural resources are a smaller part
of the economy with every succeeding year,
they are still important, and their availability
causes grave concern to many. Yet, measured
by cost or price, the scarcity of all raw materials
except lumber and oil has been decreasing
rather than increasing over the long run. ... "

"There is no reason to believe that the supply
of energy is finite or that the price will
not continue its long-run decrease. This
statement may sound less preposterous if
you consider that for a quantity to be finite it
must be measurable.... So the measure of
the future oil supply must therefore be at
least as large as the sun's 7 billion or so
years of future life. And it may include other
suns whose energy might be exploited in
the future."

"Food is an especially important resource,
and the evidence indicates that its supply is
increasing despite rising population. The long run
prices of food relative to wages„ and, even
relative to consumer goods, are down. Famine
deaths have decreased in the past century even
to absolute terms let alone relative to the much
larger population, a special boon for poor
countries. Per person food production in the
world is up over the last 30 years and more."

"In short, the source of our increased economic
blessings is the human mind, and, all other
things being equal, when there are more people,
there are more productive minds. Productivity
increases come directly from the additional
minds that develop productive new ideas, as
well as indirectly from the impact upon industrial
productivity of the additional demand for goods."

In this I agree with the doomsayers-that our
world needs the best efforts of all humanity to
improve our lot. I part company with them in that
they expect us to come to a bad end despite the
efforts we make, whereas I expect a continuation
of successful efforts. Their message is self-fulfilling
because if you expect inexorable natural limits to
stymie your efforts you are likely to feel resigned
and give up. But if you recognize the possibility--
indeed, the probability--of success, you can tap
large reserves of energy and enthusiasm. Energy
and enthusiasm, to together with the human mind
and spirit, constitute our solid hope for the economic
future, just as they have been our salvation in ages
past. With these forces at work, we will leave a
richer, safer, and more beautiful world to our
descendants, just as our ancestors improved the
world that they bestowed upon us.

Introduction to the State of Humanity

edited by Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1996)

"If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will
be less crowded (though more populated), less
polluted, more stable ecologically, and less
vulnerable to resource-supply disruption than
the world we live in now. Stresses involving
population, resources, and environment will be
less in the future than now. . . The World's
people will be richer in most ways than they are
today. . . The outlook for food and other
necessities of life will be better. . . life for most
people on earth will be less precarious
economically than it is now."

"Let's begin with the all-important issue, life
itself. The most important and amazing
demographic fact--the greatest human
achievement in history, in my view--is the
decrease in the world's death rate. It took
thousands of years to increase life expectancy
at birth from just over 20 years to the high 20's.
Then in just the past two centuries, the length
of life one could expect for a newborn in the
advanced countries jumped from less than 30
years to perhaps 75 years."

"Ask an average roomful of people if our
environment is becoming dirtier or cleaner, and
most will say "dirtier." Yet the air in the U.S. and
in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to
breathe now than in decades past; the quantities
of pollutants--especially particulates, which are
the main threat to health--have been declining.
And water quality has improved; the proportion of
monitoring sites in the U.S. with water of good
drinkability has increased since the data began
in l96l. More generally, the environment is
increasingly healthy, with every prospect that
this trend will continue."

"Fear is rampant about rapid rates of species
extinction. The fear has little or no basis. The
highest rate of observed extinctions is one
species per year, in contrast to the 40,000 per
year some ecologists have been forecasting for
the year 2000. Species matter, and deserve
thought. But the facts should matter, too, in
deciding whether to spend tens of billions for
research, "debt for nature" swaps, and other
expensive programs. Furthermore, the new
possibilities for genetic engineering, and for
storage of seeds, reduce the dangers of
extinctions that do occur. [The book] discusses
how an issue of legitimate interest and concern
has turned into an environmentalist scam."

"How can it be that economic welfare grows in
time along with population, rather than humanity
being reduced to misery and poverty as population
grows and we use more and more resources? We
need some theory to explain this controversion of
common sense. "

"More generally, the process operates as follows:
More people and increased income cause problems
in the short run--shortages and pollutions. Short-run
scarcity raises prices and pollution causes outcries.
These problems present opportunity and prompt the
search for solutions. In a free society, solutions are
eventually found, though many people seek and fail
to find solutions at cost to themselves. In the long
run the new developments leave us better off than
if the problems had not arisen. This theory fits the
facts of history."

"Technology exists now to produce in virtually
inexhaustible quantities just about all the products
made by nature--foodstuffs, oil, even pearls and
diamonds--and make them cheaper in most cases
than the cost of gathering them in the wild natural
state. And the standard of living of commoners is
higher today than that of royalty only two centuries
ago--especially their health and life expectancy,
and their mobility to all parts of the world. "

"Adding more people causes problems. But people
are also the means to solve these problems. The
main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock
of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination
and unsound social regulations of these activities.
The ultimate resource is people--especially skilled,
spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with
liberty--who will exert their wills and imaginations
for their own benefit, and so inevitably they will
benefit the rest of us as well. "

The Ultimate Resource by Julian SimonReview by Herman E. Daly, January 1982

"The word "finite" originates in mathematics, in
which context we all learn it as schoolchildren. But
even in mathematics the word's meaning is far from
unambiguous. It can have two principal meanings,
sometimes with an apparent contradiction between
them. For example, the length of a one-inch line is
finite in the sense that it bounded at both ends. But
the line within the endpoints contains an infinite
number of points; these points cannot be counted,
because they have no defined size. Therefore the
number of points in that one-inch segment is not
finite. Similarly, the quantity of copper that will
ever be available to us is not finite, because there
is no method (even in principle) of making an
appropriate count of it, given the problem of the
economic definition of "copper," the possibility of
creating copper or its economic equivalent from
other materials, and thus the lack of boundaries
to the sources from which copper might be drawn."
(Simon, The Ultimate Resource)

"He has confused an infinity of possible boundary
lines between copper and non-copper with an
infinity of amount of copper. We cannot, he says,
make an "appropriate count" of copper because
the set of all resources can be subdivided in
many ways with many possible boundaries for the
subset copper because resources are "infinitely"
substitutable. Since copper cannot be simply
counted like beans in a jar, and since what
cannot be counted is not finite, it "follows" that
copper is not finite, or copper is infinite."

Simon has argued from the premise of an "infinite"
substitutability among different elements within a
(finite) set to the conclusion of the infinity of the
set itself. But no amount of rearrangement of
divisions within a finite set can make the set infinite.
His demonstration that mankind will never exhaust
its resource base rests on the same logical fallacy
as Zeno's demonstration that Achilles will never
exhaust the distance between himself and the
tortoise.Simon appeals to the unlimited power of
technology to increase the service yielded per
unit of resource as further evidence of the
essentially non-finite nature of resources. If
resource productivity (ratio of service to resources)
were potentially infinite, then we could maintain
an ever growing value of services with an ever
smaller flow of resources. If Simon truly believes
this, then he should join those neo-malthusians
who advocate limiting the resource flow precisely
in order to force technological progress into the
direction of improving total resource productivity
and away from the recent direction of increasing
intensity of resource use. Many neo-malthusians
advocate this even though they believe the scope
for improvement is finite. If one believes the scope
for improvement in resource productivity is infinite,
then all the more reason to restrict the resource
flow."

"From Weinberg and Goeller he quotes optimistic
findings of "infinite" substitutability among resources,
assuming a future low-cost, abundant energy source.
This buttresses Simon's earlier premise of "infinite"
subdivisibility or substitutability among resources.
But it does not lend support to his fallacious
conclusion that resources are infinite and therefore
growth forever is possible. More to the point,
however, is that Weinberg and Goeller explicitly
rule out any such conclusion by stating in their
very first paragraph that their "Age of
Substitutability" is a steady state. It assumes
zero growth in population and energy use at
the highest level that Weinberg and Goeller
are willing to say is technically feasible. And
they express serious reservations about the
social and institutional feasibility of maintaining
such a high consumption steady state."

"To test this hypothesis most investigators would probably look at parts per million of various substances
emitted into the air and water by human activities
to see if they have been rising or falling over time.
Simon, however, takes life expectancy as his index
of pollution: increasing life expectancy indicates
decreasing pollution."

"The second example is the claim (we are again
told to grab our hats) that the combined
increases of income and population do not
increase "pressure" on the land. His proof: the
absolute amount of land per farm worker has
been increasing in the United States and other
countries. One might have thought that this was
a consequence of mechanization of agriculture
and that the increasing investment per acre in
machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides represented
pressure on the land, not to mention pressure on
mines, wells, rivers, lakes, and so on."

"Simon's demonstration that resources are
infinite is, in my view, a coarse mixture of simple
fallacy, omission of contrary evidence from his own
expert sources and gross statistical misinterpretation.
Since everything else hinges on the now exploded
infinite resources proposition, we could well stop
here. But there are other considerations less
central to the argument of the book that beg for
attention."

"If, Simon notwithstanding, resources are indeed
finite, then the other premises of the
neo-malthusians remain in vigor. The entropy law
tells us not only that coal is finite, but that you
can't burn the same lump twice. When burned,
available energy is irreversibly depleted and
unavailable energy is increased along with the
dissipation of materials. If nature's sources and
sinks were truly infinite, the fact that the flow
between them was entropic would hardly matter.
But with finite sources and sinks, the entropy law
greatly increases the force of scarcity."

"Simon is quite prepared to ruin the habitats of all
other species by letting them (and future
generations) bear the entropic costs of disorders
that our own continuing growth entails. For Simon,
however, this problem cannot exist because he
believes resources and absorption capacities are
infinite."

"There is a puzzling methodological inconsistency
between Parts I and II. In Part I Simon is the total
empiricist, trusting only in the extrapolation of
recent trends of falling resource prices. Any a-priori
argument from first principles about reversal of
trends due to increasing cost, diminishing returns,
the end of a bonanza, or even the S-shape of the
logistic curve characteristic of all empirically
observed growth processes simply does not
warrant consideration by this hard-headed
empiricist. Yet in Part II we find Simon refusing
to project population trends and relying on the
theory of demographic transition to reverse the
recent trend of population growth. His own graphs,
used to demonstrate the unreliability of past
population predictions, also show that a simple
linear trend would have yielded much more
accurate predictions in the 1920s than did the
then current "twilight of parenthood" theories."

"Simon wants to maximize the number of people
simultaneously alive —and, impossibly, to
maximize per-capita consumption at the same
time. These two contradictory strategies are
possible only if resources are infinite. If they
are finite then maximizing the number of
simultaneous lives means a reduction in carrying
capacity, fewer people in future time periods,
and a lower cumulative total of lives ever lived
at a sufficient standard."

"We must abandon the shallow, contrived
optimism of growthmania once and for all. The
end of growthmania is no cause for despair; it
is a hopeful new beginning. To me the optimistic
alternative is that of a steady state at a sufficient,
sustainable level in which many future generations
can rejoice in the loving study and care of God's
creation."

"Further prolongation of the current compulsive
quest for infinite growth, power, and control is
what I find depressing."

"We should learn to be good stewards of what
is already under our dominion rather than seek
always to enlarge that dominion."

We who have done a poor job of managing a
small domain should not trust ourselves to take
over control of an ever larger "infinite" domain.

THE CORNUCOPIAN FALLACIES: THE MYTH OF PERPETUAL GROWTH

by Lindsey Grant (The Futurist, August 1983)

"The environmentalist--the proponent of corrective
action-- is (or should be) simply warning of
consequences if trends or problems are ignored,
he does not need to predict. The cornucopias,
on the other hand, must predict to make his case.
He must argue that problems will be solved and
good things will happen if we let nature take its
course. Since nobody has yet been able to
predict the future, they are asking their listeners
to take a lot on faith."

"To predict the future performance of the poor
countries based upon the past performance of
the rich countries may involve too loose an
analogy to justify the faith put in it. The analogy
assumes that the underlying factors are
substantially similar. They are not. In contrast
to Europe when it industrialized, poor countries
today tend to have faster population growth
rates, no colonies where capital can be
mobilized, lower incomes (probably),
extreme foreign exchange problems, no
technological lead over the rest of the world,
and no empty new worlds to absorb their emigrants."

"[The Growth of GNP] is determined by underlying realities: the availability and quality of land, water;
industrial raw materials, and energy; technological
change; the impact of population change on
production and consumption; the productivity of
the supporting ecosystems; labor productivity;
and so on. Kahn simply projects GNP without
analyzing the forces that generate it."

"Most of us would agree that the general
condition of mankind has been improving for
a sustained period, at least until the past
decade. Indeed, the scale of the growth is a
new thing on earth; and the very magnitude of
the growth of population and of economic
activity is the source of the issue. For the first
time, population and economic activities have
grown so sharply as to bring them into a new
relationship with the scale of the earth itself."

"Can such growth be sustained, or does it itself
generate dynamics that will bring the era to an
end? If the latter, what will the changes be, and
what if anything should mankind be doing to
forestall them or shape them in beneficial
directions ?"

"If you seek a sense of what will shape the future,
examine the issues generated by population and
economic growth; do not simply extrapolate the
growth. Economic changes cannot be studied in a
vacuum. "

"The cornucopians slight the resource and
environmental issues that the environmentalists
consider the most important questions to be
examined. "

"The cornucopians stand breathless on the
edge of wonderful new expectations. Simon
writes: "Energy ... is the 'ultimate resource';
energy is the key constraint on the availability
of all other resources. . Even so, our energy
supply is non-finite. . . ."

"Any projection for continued expansion in the
use of energy must ask the question: What are
the implications of developing the energy for the
environment and for resources, and what are the
consequences of its use likely to be? The same
question should be asked about projections calling
for continuing expansion in the use of chemicals,
or indeed of any physical resource."

"These assumptions in turn generate questions
concerning desertification, the conversion of
forest and loss of forest cover; the effect of
intensive agriculture on productivity, the
impact of increased fertilizer application on
watercourses and fisheries and perhaps on
climate, and risks associated with pesticides
and monocultures--all of which relate back to
the initial assumptions about agricultural
productivity and eventually to GNP and
population assumptions."

"There is nothing remotely approaching this
sort of interactive analysis in the works of the
cornucopians. Kahn simply projects economic
growth and assumes that the necessary inputs
will be available and that the environmental
problems will be surmounted. Simon does not
address these questions in any integrated
fashion."

" The principal purpose of future studies should
be to look as far ahead as possible, to study
the implications of current and projected activity,
to see how different sectors and issues
interrelate. This process is any thing but static.
It should be a continuing process of probing and
testing the potential consequences of different
activities and directions of growth, of identifying
the issues that need attention and the potential
directions for beneficial change. "

"4. They fudge the problem by shifting the
calculations. They project the potential longevity
of supply of raw materials based on current
demand rather than on increasing demand.
Kahn and Simon have both used this technique.
Since they are also assuming rising populations
and rising per capita consumption, this is not an
argument."

"Simon, in a bit of sophistry that he has probably
come to regret by now, says: "The length of a
one-inch line is finite in the sense that it is
bounded at both ends. But the line within the
end points contains an infinite number of points....
Therefore the number of points in that one-inch
segment is not finite." He then extends the
analogy to copper and oil. He argues that we
cannot know the size of the resource "or its
economic equivalent;," and concludes, "Hence,
resources are not 'finite' in any meaningful
sense."

"He offers no capital output analysis to suggest
how world consumption levels will progress from
where they are to where he hopes they will be.
In short, he states a dream without attempting to
explore how it will be realized or what the effects
of its achievement will be. "

6. Simon says different things at different times. Sometimes, he advocates population growth
without limits of time or circumstance, and he
speaks of resource availability and population
growth "for ever" without recognizing the crudest
of barriers: lack of space.

"From here, however, we move to an article of
faith among the cornucopians that the more
pragmatic among us do not share: that the
recent high rate of technological growth will
continue indefinitely."

"Technology may continue its recent phenomenal
growth. It may not. It is an act of faith to assume
that it will. "

"In addition, technology is not necessarily benign.
It shapes us, as we shape it. Right now, it may
be making communications cheaper,while it
makes unemployment worse. "

"A sensible observer with a feeling for history
would be justified in assuming that those
solutions will in turn generate new problems to
be addressed. "

"The technological growth on which the
cornucopians pin their hopes is itself part of that
change, as are the population growth and the
environmental by-products of technological
growth that concern the environmentalists. "

"If we urge the comucopians to recognize the
problems we should share their interest in
promoting technological change that will help
to address the problems."

Simon's Logical Fallacies

Perilous Optimism: A Critique of Simon's Logic

Julian Simon's Major Logical Fallacies: A Guide to
Faulty Economic Reasoning by Chris H. Lewis, Ph.D.

Guide to Logical Fallacies

Informal Logical Fallacies

Index to Logical Fallacies

Perilous Optimism: A Critique of Simon's Logic

"We should take the optimists seriously, and carefully answer and refute their arguments, for the simple reason that the political-economic paradigm of
endless resources and constant growth dominates
the thinking of those who establish and implement governmental and corporate policies throughout the
developed world."
Ernest Partridge, in "Perilous Optimism"

"Thus the economists' choice is simple and stark:
either devise and defend a new economic theory that accommodates itself to the basic conditions of life as articulated by the life sciences (e.g., ecosystemic stability and population limits) and the physical sciences (e.g., thermodynamic laws), or else simply choose to ignore these facts and deal instead with a fanciful world. Clearly, Simon has chosen the latter course and, in the face of both common sense and scientific evidence, has posited, as he must, a world of infinite resources that is supportive of perpetual growth.

"I once heard Paul Ehrlich remark that if an engineer proposed a design for an aircraft with a constantly expanding crew, we would think him mad. And yet, when an economist defends a theory that posits a perpetually growing global economy, he is awarded a Nobel Prize. Notwithstanding that, "perpetual growth" is unknown in the natural world. In the words of the novelist Edward Abbey, "the ideology of constant growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." It is an ideology that leads to the death both of the cancer and its host." Ernest Partridge

The Doomslayer (Wired, 1997)
By Ed Regis

"The environment is going to hell, and human life is doomed to only get worse, right? Wrong. Conventional wisdom, meet Julian Simon, the Doomslayer. "

"This is the litany : Our resources are running out. The air is bad, the water worse. The planet's species are dying off - more exactly, we're killing them -at the staggering rate of 100,000 peryear, a figure that works out to almost 2,000 species per week, 300 per day, 10 perhour, another dead species every six minutes.We're trashing the planet, washing away the topsoil, paving over our farmlands, systematically deforesting our wildernesses, decimating the biota, and ultimately killing ourselves. "

"The world is getting progressively poorer, and it's all because of population, or more precisely, over-population. There's a finite store of resources on our pale blue dot, spaceship Earth, our small and fragile tiny planet, and we're fast approaching its ultimate carrying capacity. The limits to growth are finally upon us, and we're living on borrowed time. The laws of population growth are inexorable. Unless we act decisively, the final result is written in stone: mass poverty, famine, starvation, and death. "

"Time is short, and we have to act now . "

"That's the standard and canonical litany. It's been drilled into our heads so far and so forcefully that to hear it yet once more is ... well, it's almost reassuring. It's comforting, oddly consoling - at least we're face to face with the enemies: consumption, population, mindless growth. And we know the solution: cut back, contract, make do with less. "Live simply so that others may simply live."

"There's just one problem with The Litany, just one slight little wee imperfection: every item in that dim and dreary recitation, each and every last claim, is false. Incorrect. At variance with the truth."

"Not the way it is, folks. "

"Thus saith The Doomslayer, one Julian L. Simon, a neither shy nor retiring nor particularly mild-mannered professor of business administration at a middling eastern-seaboard state university. Simon paints a somewhat different picture of the human condition circa 1997. "

"Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way," he says. "Just about every important long-run measure of human material welfare shows improvement over the decades and centuries, in the United States and the rest of the world. Raw materials - all of them - have become less scarce rather than more. The air in the US and in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe. Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy, with every prospect that this trend will continue."

"Fear is rampant about rapid rates of species extinction," he continues, "but the fear has little or no basis. The highest rate of observed extinction, though certainly more have gone extinct unobserved, is one species per year ..."

(One species per year!)

"... in contrast to the 40,000 per year that some ecologists have been forecasting for the year 2000."

"The scare that farmlands are blowing and washing away is a fraud upon the public. The aggregate data on the condition of farmland and the rate of erosion do not support the concern about soil erosion. The data suggest that the condition of cropland has been improving rather than worsening."

"As for global deforestation, "the world is not being deforested; it is being reforested in general."

"Still, there is one resource that the world does not have enough of, that's actually getting rarer, according to Julian Simon. That resource: people. "

"People are becoming more scarce," he says, "even though there are more of us."

Hello?