politics

For most of my life, I’ve been hearing very specific predictions that the Earth was doomed and humanity was all going to starve to death.

The prescriptions were always the same. Reduce energy use. Don’t have children. Recycle. Stop economic growth. Quit driving cars. The list went on and on.

The predictions we heard — from mainstream scientists respected by the environmental movement — were dire. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich told us (in his best-selling book, “The Population Bomb”) that millions and millions of people were doomed to starve to death no matter what we did. Respected ecologist Kenneth Watt told us that the world was cooling and that we were heading toward another ice age.

The point isn’t to laugh at the ignorance of well-meaning people in 1970, but to ask why we’re still following the prognostications and political agendas of people whose predictions have all been wrong before.

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