Doomsayers and doomslayers

On the 25th anniversary of Julian Simon’s famous bet on the future of the planet, a look at the ways in which we see our tomorrow.

IN August last year, Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, laid a bet with John Tierney. Simmons predicted that oil prices will soar into the triple digits, and backed his assertion with $5,000.

So, will oil be $200 in 2010? Remember, what you believe will slot you as either a doomsayer or doomslayer.

More is better

To cast further light on the Doomsayers and Doomslayers, we need to go back to 1980, when Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb and an economist, Julian L. Simon of the University of Maryland, laid a bet.

Dr. Simon had unveiled his rather radical vision of human progress in Science magazine in 1980, positing that population growth is more boon than bane, since it would invariably lead to a cleaner environment, healthier humanity and more abundant supplies of food and raw materials. Ehrlich’s rebuttal of this premise was basically simple arithmetic: the planet’s resources had to be divided among a population that was then growing at the unprecedented rate of 75 million people a year. The warning was clear: population growth was outstripping the earth’s supplies of food, fresh water and minerals.

The Hindu