What on Earth Is Fuss About? He’s All for Saving Planet

My friend Herb Henrikson warned me that if I gave space to the theories of economist Julian Simon, who holds that increasing population will bring a better life by promoting new technologies, I would find myself “all alone at the cocktail party.”

I merely recalled a notorious wager in which Simon bet Paul Ehrlich, the militant foe of overpopulation, that over 10 years the price of five common metals would go down, not up, as Ehrlich had predicted. Simon won.

I also quoted three science writers--Michael Crichton, Lewis Thomas and Stephen Jay Gould--who had ridiculed the common belief that the human species is destroying the planet.

Their argument was that the Earth had already survived many cataclysmic changes and would also survive us, including nuclear warfare, if it comes; they did not deny that the species might very well destroy itself by making the environment unlivable.

As Henrikson predicted, I am all alone at the cocktail party.

Ben Zuckerman of the UCLA astronomy department sends me a letter he wrote to William Buckley after Buckley alluded to “hysteria about overpopulation” as “a nightmare” of the environmental lobby.

Zuckerman said that, in view of the facts, advocating population growth was “not responsible behavior.” The facts, he said, are that if the present rate of growth (about 2% a year) continues until the year 3400, each person now alive would have one trillion descendants and the total population would be 10 to the 22nd power (which my numerate son Curt tells me is one sextillion.)

“I am convinced,” writes Don McKenzie, “that the unfolding stimulus for protecting the Earth stems from an innate desire that it continue as a suitable habitat for the forms of life it presently supports. I, for one, recoil at the thought of future generations, facing extinction from dying life-support systems, grimly recounting the follies of their selfish human ancestors.”

Dr. Thrift G. Hanks agrees that the Earth is indestructible, short of “a cosmic death,” but “its living species and individuals are not. If we treasure the beauty and diversity of our existing life forms, knowing that, with their passing, the human species may also have passed before comparable life again appears, we must take the short view.”

Eric N. Winter says he found my column “amazingly irresponsible,” adding: “Are you saying that it doesn’t matter if we destroy life as we know and love it on this planet because in 10 million years some form of cockroach will evolve and really enjoy the lifestyle?”

“Ehrlich would have done well,” writes Dr. L. F. Smith, “to make his bet with Simon on the survival of five then-endangered species, probably extinct 10 years later, rather than on the price of five inert metals.

“Just to play it safe, why test such a thesis by our exponential breeding, which is undeniably resulting in deforestation, pollution, starvation, and so forth. Why not go for zero population growth?”

“If Julian Simon believes population increase translates into desirable advances,” writes Doug Molitor, story editor of Captain Planet, “he should logically be living in that utopia of tomorrow, Mexico City.

“I presume you wanted to have a gentle laugh at the tree huggers, but in the process you trivialized the most important issue of the 20th Century. Namely, that we humans are making world-changing choices with scarcely a thought. . . .”

I want to make it clear that neither Gould, Thomas nor Crichton argued against environmentalism. They merely meant to quiet the Chicken Littles who cry that we are destroying Earth itself.

I believe that there are too many of us and that too many more may bring the end of our good life on this bountiful planet.

I thought I made that clear in my last line, “Let’s don’t worry about the planet; let’s worry about us.”

But Zuckerman called it self-serving: “I worry not about us but about the 15 million or more innocent species that are doomed to extinction during the next 100 years as a result of our excesses.”

I worry about the other species too, but not about 15 million of them. That number would have to include a lot of disagreeable insects.

But David L. Simmons of Ridgecrest writes: “I fully and enthusiastically support your closing words, which absolutely do not follow from Simon’s argument.”

Molitor concludes: “With your last point, I fully agree: It’s time to worry about us!”

I’m doing my bit. I’m not having any more children. Who needs a trillion descendants?