The Bet Paul Ehrlich Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth Future (Audible Audio Edition) Paul Sabin Anthony Haden Salerno Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : The Bet Paul Ehrlich Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth Future (Audible Audio Edition) Paul Sabin Anthony Haden Salerno Audible Studios Books
In 1980, the iconoclastic economist Julian Simon challenged celebrity biologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet. Their wager on the future prices of five metals captured the public's imagination as a test of coming prosperity or doom. Ehrlich, author of the landmark book The Population Bomb, predicted that rising populations would cause overconsumption, resource scarcity, and famine-with apocalyptic consequences for humanity. Simon optimistically countered that human welfare would flourish thanks to flexible markets, technological change, and our collective ingenuity.
Simon and Ehrlich's debate reflected a deepening national conflict over the future of the planet. The Bet weaves the two men's lives and ideas together with the era's partisan political clashes over the environment and the role of government. In a lively narrative leading from the dawning environmentalism of the 1960s through the pivotal presidential contest between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and on into the 1990s, Paul Sabin shows how the fight between Ehrlich and Simon-between environmental fears and free-market confidence-helped create the gulf separating environmentalists and their critics today. Drawing insights from both sides, Sabin argues for using social values, rather than economic or biological absolutes, to guide society's crucial choices relating to climate change, the planet's health, and our own.
The Bet Paul Ehrlich Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth Future (Audible Audio Edition) Paul Sabin Anthony Haden Salerno Audible Studios Books
The Bet (2013) by Paul Sabin is a really fine book that looks at the different beliefs of the ecologist and author of The Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich and the economist Julian Simon and their famous bet on the price of natural resources.Sabin is an academic at Yale who teaches environmental history. He introduces the book by describing his own environmentalism which is a very honest and clear way of clarifying his own biases.
The book then looks at Paul Ehrlich’s rise to fame as a prophet of doom. Ehrlich’s childhood, career as a butterfly biologist and his rise a ecological activist is catalogued. Ehrlich’s book ‘The Population Bomb’ and his series of dire predictions and rise to fame in the 1960s and 1970s is described with insight.
Sabin then looks at Julian Simon’s childhood and career. Interestingly both Simon and Ehrlich grew up in suburban New Jersey to upwardly mobile Jewish parents. Simon went to Harvard then obtained an MBA and then a PhD at the University of Chicago. Simon initially worked on using marketing to reduce population growth but then investigated the assumption that increased population was a problem and came to the opposite conclusion.
Next the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s is described. The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by Richard Nixon and the passage of various other laws and the rise of Jimmy Carter and his own environmental beliefs along with the oil crisis are discussed.
The book then gets to the famous bet between Simon and Ehrlich where Simon challenged Ehrlich to pick 5 metals that he thought would rise over the next decade. Ehrlich comprehensively lost the bet after declaring that taking up the bet would be easily getting free money. The Reagan presidency and Reagan ‘s scepticism of the benefits of further environmental regulation is summarised.
Sabin also points out that while the general thrust of the Carter was toward environmentalism and Reagan toward the market that Carter deregulated the energy industry substantially and Reagan signed on to the Montreal Protocol to reduce CFCs.
Then the increasing polarization of environmental debates between pro-market optimists and environmental catastrophists is nicely described. The contribution of Bjorn Lomborg in fact checking the debate, coming out generally on Simon’s side and then being demonised by environmentalists is added to the discussion. Despite being substantially wrong Ehrlich was far more successful in winning prizes and notoriety than Simon.
Sabin concludes the book by praising the contributions of both Ehrlich and Simon while pointing out that Ehrlich was categorically wrong. He credits Ehrlich with allowing increasing environmental regulations to be passed while crediting Simon with pointing out that the price mechanism and human ingenuity have shown Malthusians to be wrong for the past 200 years. Sabin would like to see more of a fusion between the two positions.
It’s an excellent book that both environmentalists and others will enjoy and get a lot from. Sabin has done an excellent job in writing a very readable, interesting book.
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The Bet Paul Ehrlich Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth Future (Audible Audio Edition) Paul Sabin Anthony Haden Salerno Audible Studios Books Reviews
Started strong. Would have been a better article in the Atlantic. No need for it to stretch the length it did.
Somehow, in the 1970s I missed the whole "environmental thing", so this was a fascinating glimpse of a debate that now seems dated.
Intellectually, my sympathies went with Julian Simon, and at this remove, the prognostications of Paul Ehrlich seem to be quite reckless and without grounding in reality. However, the modeling tools we have now were not available then - the "Limits to Growth" report of that era was ground-breaking, not maybe in its predictions, but in its methodology.
And even Simon seemed to go beyond what was warranted by the data, and in the end seemed to only articulating a faith in human ingenuity and techno-optimism that strains credulity.
The "bet" itself now seems trivial - Ehrlich made a howler of a mistake in letting a long-run trend be judged by short-run effects. That seems to have been his major error, and his critics within biology and economics were correct that his predictions of imminent catastrophe were wildly wrong.
And today's population predictions are much more benign than Ehrlich's, and the major danger for the 21st century seems to be the effects of industrial civilization that will be redoubled by ambitions of the new populations to have comfortable western-style lifestyles powered by fossil fuels. We know that will have malignant effects, for example in the collapse of marine life and sea-level rise.
That is a problem that neither Simon nor Ehrlich prepared us for, though it may be said that in the long run Ehrlich and Malthus may be proved right. In fact, the planet seems to be in a race between Simon's human-driven innovations and Malthus' dire warnings. So far humans have been winning, but at a terrible cost to the planet that raises moral as well as political issues. These are noted by Sabin.
As Ehrlich once said "Nature always bats last". Sabin's books ends on that discordant and uneasy note.
Sabin does a terrific job telling the story in a compelling, readable, and thoughtful way. If nothing else in this era of standoffs and showdowns, The Bet shows us how smart, thoughtful, big-thinking people can fundamentally disagree and come up with a way to quantify their argument and settle it amicably, and at the end of the day, honorably. What further evolves from The Bet is that adaptation aside, managing our planet's non-living resources is at best a gamble on anticipating the needs of a growing human population, and balancing those extractive activities with living communities whose fundamental need for clean air and water will never change.
Shows the hysteria of Ehrlich's position and how wrong he has been on the World's ability to support higher total population The contrast with Simon's optimism is a good contrast. The bet itself is a bit irrelevant except as a framing of the discussion - good read for those interested in these types of issues
An interesting argument as both of these men today would probably team rather than compete to understand the future of humanity.
Read this book to understand how the world became poltically divided on climate. It's a simple, short and infuriating read. It makes so much sense when you know why.
Excellent case study on advocacy, the development of the environmental lobby, role of academia / business / politics in shaping policy. In the case study vein, the research theory is confirmed in this portrait of the right vs left within the scientific and political arenas.
http//ann.sagepub.com/content/658/1/36.full.pdf?ijkey=4gWUwxTEDhd22&keytype=ref&siteid=spann
The Bet (2013) by Paul Sabin is a really fine book that looks at the different beliefs of the ecologist and author of The Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich and the economist Julian Simon and their famous bet on the price of natural resources.
Sabin is an academic at Yale who teaches environmental history. He introduces the book by describing his own environmentalism which is a very honest and clear way of clarifying his own biases.
The book then looks at Paul Ehrlich’s rise to fame as a prophet of doom. Ehrlich’s childhood, career as a butterfly biologist and his rise a ecological activist is catalogued. Ehrlich’s book ‘The Population Bomb’ and his series of dire predictions and rise to fame in the 1960s and 1970s is described with insight.
Sabin then looks at Julian Simon’s childhood and career. Interestingly both Simon and Ehrlich grew up in suburban New Jersey to upwardly mobile Jewish parents. Simon went to Harvard then obtained an MBA and then a PhD at the University of Chicago. Simon initially worked on using marketing to reduce population growth but then investigated the assumption that increased population was a problem and came to the opposite conclusion.
Next the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s is described. The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by Richard Nixon and the passage of various other laws and the rise of Jimmy Carter and his own environmental beliefs along with the oil crisis are discussed.
The book then gets to the famous bet between Simon and Ehrlich where Simon challenged Ehrlich to pick 5 metals that he thought would rise over the next decade. Ehrlich comprehensively lost the bet after declaring that taking up the bet would be easily getting free money. The Reagan presidency and Reagan ‘s scepticism of the benefits of further environmental regulation is summarised.
Sabin also points out that while the general thrust of the Carter was toward environmentalism and Reagan toward the market that Carter deregulated the energy industry substantially and Reagan signed on to the Montreal Protocol to reduce CFCs.
Then the increasing polarization of environmental debates between pro-market optimists and environmental catastrophists is nicely described. The contribution of Bjorn Lomborg in fact checking the debate, coming out generally on Simon’s side and then being demonised by environmentalists is added to the discussion. Despite being substantially wrong Ehrlich was far more successful in winning prizes and notoriety than Simon.
Sabin concludes the book by praising the contributions of both Ehrlich and Simon while pointing out that Ehrlich was categorically wrong. He credits Ehrlich with allowing increasing environmental regulations to be passed while crediting Simon with pointing out that the price mechanism and human ingenuity have shown Malthusians to be wrong for the past 200 years. Sabin would like to see more of a fusion between the two positions.
It’s an excellent book that both environmentalists and others will enjoy and get a lot from. Sabin has done an excellent job in writing a very readable, interesting book.
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