Did you hear? The world is about to end!
60 minutes recently featured Paul Ehrlich, bestselling author, Population bomb. “Humanity is not sustainable,” he said.
Why would 60 minutes interview Honestly?
For years, Ehrlich said, “We are very close to starvation” and “In the next 15 years, it will be over.” He was wrong time and time again.
More, 60 minutes takes him seriously. “Paul Ehrlich may have lived long enough to see some of his dire prophecies come true,” said reporter Scott Pelley. Now, 60 minutes says, “scientists say” the earth is in the midst of a “mass extinction!”
Doom sells.
Ehrlich’s book has sold an incredible three million copies. It was argued that the growing population of the earth would lead to worldwide starvation.
The opposite happened.
The world population has more than doubled. But today it exists less hunger!
60 minutes did mention that Ehrlich was wrong about mass starvation, but ignored his many other silly predictions. One was that by the year 2000 (due to climate change) England would not exist.
Ehrlich won’t talk to me now, but seven years ago, when my producer asked him about his nonsense, Ehrlich said, “When you’re predicting the future, you’ve got it wrong.”
The media should ignore doomsayers like Ehrlich and pay more attention to people like Marian Tupy, editor of HumanProgress.org.
In my new video, Tupy points out that “life gets better.” The modern era has brought much longer lives and the greatest decline in poverty ever.
Of course, universities, media and politicians say that capitalism is destroying the country, so young people throw soup at famous images. They believe it is the moral thing to do because we are facing the apocalypse!
“If you’re selling the apocalypse,” says Tupy, “people feel like you’re deep and you care” But “if you’re selling rational optimism, you sound carefree.”
Do not worry? The cursed are those who are against the people. Ehrlich once even floated the idea of sterilizing people and reducing population growth by having the government poison our food.
“Ehrlich sees human beings as destroyers, not creators,” says Tupy, “no different than rabbits. When they eat all the grass around us, their population explodes, but then they will perish. But human beings are fundamentally different. We have the capacity to innovations.”
It is counterintuitive to think that humans can be good for the environment. “We use things,” I tell Tupy.
“We use things, but we also grow things,” he replies. “What’s important is new knowledge. Think about something as simple as sand. When we started melting sand to create glass, we used the first glass for glass beads. Now we’re creating microchips.”
Similar innovations in agriculture, transportation and genetic engineering are the reason why our growing population does not destroy nature.
“Forests have grown by 35 percent in North America and Western Europe in the last 20 years,” Tupy points out.
This is because innovative people have found ways to produce more food on less land. Also, developed countries can afford nature protection.
But this idea is a human innovation helps nature is nowhere near as popular as the idea that humans are destroying the Earth.
Many young people are so misled that many do not want to have children.
But it would hurt world! Fewer women giving birth today is probably a bigger threat than climate change. Not only do we need young people to take care of more and more of us old people, we need them to invent things that will solve the Earth’s problems.
More children means more people who could grow up to cure cancer or invent a machine that eats carbon.
However, more people alone are not enough to deliver the innovation we need.
“Certainly not,” says Tupy. “If only the number of people mattered, China would be the richest country for centuries. What you need are people and freedom. If you let human beings be free, it will create more value for everyone.”
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