Warring Dogmas Block Climate-Change Progress

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- National debates over environmentalissues are sometimes derailed by two kinds of extremists: eco-doomsayers and techno-optimists. The two positions are bestcaptured in the most dramatic bet in social science. It isuseful to recall the tale, recently cataloged by Yale Universityhistorian Paul Sabin, because the legacy of the bet is with ustoday, above all in the domain of climate change.

Paul Ehrlich is a Stanford University biologist whoselifelong concern has been overpopulation. In the 1960s and1970s, he issued dire warnings, most prominently in his 1968best-seller, “The Population Bomb.” Ehrlich argued thatpopulation growth would place increasing strains on the planet’snatural resources, creating forms of scarcity that would producewidespread human suffering. Notwithstanding his personalebullience, Ehrlich warned of “famines of unbelievableproportions” occurring by 1975 and of “hundreds of millions ofpeople” starving to death in the 1970s and 1980s.