The bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and our gamble over Earth's future

Abstract

The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future Paul Sabin New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013, 304 pp. Yale historian Paul Sabin's The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future is worth a read because of its detailed tour through world of environmental doomsaying. Yet, in end, I was profoundly disappointed, consigning this book to my very large Cassandra File because Sabin endorses that doomsaying as expressed by dreaded global warming. The Bet is about a very public wager between economist Julian Simon and serial apocalypse predictor Paul Ehrlich (cosigned with John Holdren, President Obama's science advisor). Ehrlich bet that price of five key metals would rise between 1981 and 1990, and Simon bet they would decline (in constant dollars). Ehrlich was spectacularly wrong, but nonetheless continued, and continues, to enjoy a substantial public presence despite virtually none of his predictions coming true. Simon, who died in 1998, was very poorly compensated and couldn't even get University of Maryland to give him a secretary. He found it increasingly hard to publish in academic literature, and he was confounded by durability of environmental apocalypse meme. In 1995, he wrote in San Francisco Chronicle: After 25 years of doomsayers being proven entirely wrong, their credibility and influence waxes ever greater. Indeed. Ehrlich has been showered with goody-goody prizes around planet. He's still a staple on dinosaur media. Being fundamentally wrong has been very, very good to him, and being right bought Simon virtually nothing. Sabin is far too kind to Ehrlich. One of few criticisms comes at end: Most fundamentally, human history over past forty years has not conformed to Paul predictions. Sabin cannot bring himself to say what can be said with more economy of words, namely, Ehrlich's predictions were wrong. Further, he comes perilously close to blaming Simon for another end of world--that is, mother of all environmental scares, global warming. Sabin contends that the most pernicious current reflection of Ehrlich and Simon's clash is ongoing political impasse over climate change. That's kind of fatuous academic blather we've grown to expect from global warming crowd. Blame Julian Simon's bet. Heck, why not trot out Koch Brothers while you're at it? Blame anyone but dons of environmental science, who every interest to hype every issue. What a spectacular misreading of recent history. The reason that Senate didn't pass House's 2009 cap-and-trade bill isn't because of Julian Simon. It's because Senate staffers read polls. Three days after House passed that infamous bill, Scott Rasmussen's generic congressional ballot switched from Democrat to Republican. Given that index is a three-day running average, this was as close to a single cause-and-effect poll shift as it ever gets. Did Julian Simon cause this? Sixty-five seats in House went from Democrat to Republican in 2010 mid-term, as did control of chamber. Virtually every close race was lost by a Democrat who voted for cap-and-trade. In Senate, every close contest was won by a Democrat. Both houses voted for oxymoronic Affordable Care Act, but only one voted for cap-and-trade. While trotting out his glib explanation for failure of his preferred policy, Sabin bemoans generic failure of environmental hype. Conservative commentators, he notes, have warned of 'apocalypse fatigue.' Fact check: According to wordspy.com, I coined term, and I'm no conservative. As I said on CNN's Crossfire (February 10, 1992), I think problem, Larry, is that we keep on seeing this science by press release with these apocalyptic pronouncements. …