Visualizzazione post con etichetta paul sabin the bet. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta paul sabin the bet. Mostra tutti i post

lunedì 8 gennaio 2018

6. Polarizzazione nel dibattito sull'ambiente.

1990 Julian Simon vince la sua scommessa contro Paul Ehrlich. Riceve i 576000 dollari.

Ha vinto su tutti il fronte. La popolazione è aumentata. I prezzi dei minerali contenuti Sì sono tutti abbassati.

Il dibattito ambientalista non sarà più lo stesso. Nasce lo stereotipo dei falsi profeti. Thomas Malthus riceve una botta tremenda. E con lui William Stanley Jevons, Fairfield Osborn e William Vogt.

La reazione di pe. La scommessa non prova nulla. Unico errore ammesso il periodo considerato, 10 anni sono pochi. Simon e come chi si butta dal Empire State Building e dopo 10 piani dice tutto bene.

Simon bandiera dei conservatori. Ron Bailey in his 1993 book Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse. God Wants You to Be Rich, financial advice author Paul Zane Pilzer.

Nella storia hanno pesato i cicli macroeconomici più che la crescita della popolazione. La volatilità dei prezzi ha pesato.

Ma la scommessa diventa un simbolo e la divisione insanabile. Prima conservatori e progressisti non erano così divisi sull'ambiente.

Le controversie sull'ambiente diventano radicali. Spesso è il punto chiave dei programmi politici.

PE accusato di dare credibilità alle tesi immigrazionista.

Nordhaus su pe: salva il pianeta a spese dei suoi abitanti. La questione dei valori mescolata indebitamente a quella scientifica.

Una nuova proposta di scommessa formulata da Simon viene rifiutata PE.

Simon rifiuta la scommessa proposta da ehrlich e shnider. Indicatori di benessere insensati. La concentrazione dell'anidride carbonica nell'aria non dice nulla sul nostro benessere. Simon propone altri indicatori. Aspettativa di vita, tempo libero, potere di acquisto, prezzi.

La diatriba si inasprisce. Non si trova un terreno comune. Attacchi alla persona. Toni sempre più frustrati e amari.

Il prestigio degli sconfitti non viene scalfito. Simon e frustrato. L'essere vittima di continui attacchi dà uno stigma di purezza a PE. I nemici di Simon continuano a dominare la scena. Simon si ammala. Colpito da infarto.

Da morto diventa un simbolo contro il club di roma, Paul Ehlich, Lester Brown e al corpo

Parola d'ordine a destra. Simonizzare il riscaldamento globale.

Erede. Lomborg. Tutto sommato le cose sul nostro pianeta vanno meglio e migliorano sempre. Più tempo libero, più sicurezza e meno incidenti, più educazione e spaghi, più reddito, meno carestie, più cibo e più salute per tutti.
Meglio adattarsi ai cambiamenti climatici. Il soldi spesi per tagliare le emissioni avrebbero potuto dare acqua poeta a tutti i poveri del mondo. La posizione terzista né a destra né a sinistra di lomborg lo rende particolarmente insidioso.

La critica avvelenata a lomborg non sarebbe stata concepibile prima della scommessa.

Tra ambientalisti ed economisti la differenza sta sempre più nel sistema di valori. Antiumanesimo degli ambientalisti. Gli uomini non hanno il diritto di far scomparire le altre specie sul pianeta. Estetismo ambientalista.Oreskes lo ammetto candidamente.

lunedì 10 aprile 2017

Umanisti contro Ecologisti

La battaglia culturale sui cambiamenti climatici ha un precedente storico?
Ma certo: lo scontro sulla crescita della popolazione mondiale che infervorò gli anni settanta.
Come sintetizzare questo precedente?
Con la scommessa tra Paul Ehrlich e Julian Simon. Un evento epocale che segna il fronte ancora ai nostri giorni: umanisti contro ecologisti.
Ebbene, di questa scommessa parla "The Bet" il dettagliato libro di Paul Sabin.
***
Chi era Paul Ehlrich?...
... Ehrlich had made his name two years earlier with a blockbuster jeremiad, The Population Bomb. “The battle to feed humanity is over,” Ehrlich warned in his book, predicting that hundreds of millions of people “are going to starve to death.”...
Il suo libro best seller...
... Ehrlich had made his name two years earlier with a blockbuster jeremiad, The Population Bomb. “The battle to feed humanity is over,” Ehrlich warned in his book, predicting that hundreds of millions of people “are going to starve to death.”...
Con lui la scienza "simpatica" e glamour (ma rigorosa) irrompe nei talk show televisivi...
... As Carson introduced Ehrlich to millions of ordinary Americans, a new environmentalism was dawning...
La politica non può più trascurarla...
... Nixon was about to create the Environmental Protection Agency...
Ci si organizza...
... Zero Population Growth, the organization that Ehrlich had founded to advance his agenda of population control...
Intanto da casa, Julian Simon assiste dal suo salottino anonimo alle prodezze in TV del suo futuro avversario...
... in Urbana, Illinois, a little-known business administration professor named Julian Simon, also thirty-seven, watched Ehrlich’s performances with growing dismay and envy. Carson asked Ehrlich about the relation between population growth and the food supply... Ehrlich said it was “already too late to avoid famines that will kill millions.”...
Assisteva brontolando... Fame nel mondo? JS riteneva ci fossero proteine per tutti a basso costo, aveva appena affrontato il problema nella sua tesi di laurea...
... The Chicago-trained economist had recently written that processed fish, soybeans, and algae could “produce enough protein to supply present and future needs, and at low cost.”...
***
Ecco allora i due "poli" della battaglia che andava montando...
... Simon and Ehrlich represented two poles in the bitter contest over the future that helped define the 1970s...
Ambientalismo contro Umanesimo...
... Simon and Ehrlich represented two poles in the bitter contest over the future that helped define the 1970s....
La litania dell'ecologista..
... Ehrlich commented broadly on nuclear power and endangered species, immigration and race relations. He readily denounced “growthmanic economists and profit-hungry businessmen”...
E le frustrazioni dell'umanista...
... Meanwhile, Simon for years played the role of frustrated and largely ignored bystander. “What could I do? Go talk to five people?” he later asked...
***
Interessante il passato di Simon...
... in the late 1960s, Simon too had argued urgently in favor of slowing population growth. He had written studies arguing that birth control programs were a “fantastic economic bargain” for countries seeking to raise incomes....Un allineato.
Poi, il cambio di rotta grazie a un'idea centrale...
... Simon argued that more people meant more ideas... Rather than sparking the world’s crises, population growth would help resolve them. People, as Simon titled his landmark 1981 tome, were The Ultimate Resource...
Prima: più persone, più stomaci, meno risorse per il pianeta. Dopo: più persone, più idee, meno problemi per il pianeta.
JS lancia la sfida agli apocalittici...
... In 1980, Simon challenged Ehrlich in Social Science Quarterly to a contest that directly tested their competing visions of the future, one apocalyptic and fearful of human excess, the other optimistic and bullish about human progress...
La sfida si concretizza in una scommessa con PE...
... Ehrlich agreed to bet Simon that the cost of chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten would increase in the next decade. It was a simple thousand-dollar wager... five industrial metals, ten years, prices up or down...
Forse Ehlrich era stato molto impressionato dalla recente crisi petrolifera dei primi settanta...
... Ehrlich’s conviction reflected a more general sense after the 1973 Arab oil embargo that the world risked running out of vital resources...
Di certo Simon credeva molto nella tecnologia...
... Simon argued that markets and new technologies would drive prices down...
Esito della scommessa:...
... The outcome of the bet would either provide ammunition for Ehrlich’s campaign against population growth and environmental calamity or promote Simon’s optimism about human resourcefulness through new technologies and market forces...
L'umanesimo sconfisse l'ecologismo.
La scienza fu battuta dall'economia.
L'ottimismo della ragione sotterrò il pessimismo del contabile.
***
La disfida e il suo epilogo ebbe importanti ripercussioni culturali...
... their bet resonated with the cultural clash occurring in the country as a whole... The bet also captured the starkly different paths of Democrat Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election...
Qualcuno si è spinto a dire che la stagione neoliberista partì da quel momento: se il Pianeta sapeva auto-medicarsi perché non deregolamentare e far fiorire l’economia?
***
PE in fondo era un malthusiano e Malthus è il grande perdente nella modernità...
... Ehrlich’s widely publicized fears about population growth revived the arguments of the Reverend Thomas Malthus...
Se PE era Malthus, JS era William Godwin...
... Early critics of Malthus, however, such as the English philosopher William Godwin, anticipated Julian Simon’s critique of Ehrlich, mocking Malthus’s conviction that humanity was doomed to misery...
Ma l’ottimismo di Engels è da citare a sorpresa tra i precursori di JS...
... Other nineteenth-century critics of Malthus, such as Friedrich Engels, thought that agricultural productivity could be “increased ad infinitum by the application of capital, labour and science.”...
Il "natalismo" di Simon era stato ispirato forse da Jeremy Bentham...
... What is the purpose of humans on earth? How should we measure the success of human societies? Simon was influenced by the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher. Bentham proposed that the “measure of right and wrong” in society should be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Following this logic, Julian Simon welcomed continued population growth because it meant that more people could live productive and meaningful lives...
Una cosa è certa: Simon mette l'uomo al centro...
... Simon did not speak in the elementary terms of “pain and pleasure.” But he also placed human welfare at the center of his moral universe...
Per quello nel sul caso parliamo di umanesimo.
Ehrlich, al centro ci mette il pianeta terra...
... Humanity, Ehrlich thought, could not serve as the measure of all things... Humans needed to accept their proper role in a larger balance of nature on earth...
Per quello nel suo caso parliamo di ecologismo.
***
Ma lo scontro tra i due esemplifica anche un fenomeno preoccupante: la polarizzazione del dibattito...
... the bet epitomized the increasingly polarized rhetoric of American politics...
Differenza nelle credenze altrui,  ma anche nei suoi valori. Da avversari ci si trasforma in nemici.
Torniamo all’oggi: “bomba demografica” e “cambiamento climatico”. Difficile negare le affinità tra i due temi e i due movimenti che li agitavano e li agitano ancora...
... prominent political debates over climate change, for example, starting in the 1990s slipped into rhetorical ruts established in earlier debates over population growth...
Per questo la storia di questa scommessa resta una storia esemplare...
Instead of reading Paul Ehrlich’s clash with Julian Simon as a simple white hat–black hat morality tale, their story can move us beyond stereotyped portrayals of environmentalists and conservatives...
La polarizzazione dello scontro ha condotto ad un mancato riconoscimento reciproco. Tutto nella posizione avversaria è stato liquidato come “spazzatura”.
Eppure, forse, in Ehrlich c'era anche del buono...
... Paul Ehrlich’s contribution—and that of environmental scientists as a whole after World War II—lay in the ability to reveal the deep connections between humans and nature and to show how the planet was changing. Through research and advocacy, Ehrlich and other scientists helped avert genuine ecological disasters...
Un problema come quello dell'ozono, per esempio, è stato riconosciuto, affrontato e risolto con mentalità ehrlichiana...
... Paul Ehrlich’s contribution—and that of environmental scientists as a whole after World War II—lay in the ability to reveal the deep connections between humans and nature and to show how the planet was changing. Through research and advocacy, Ehrlich and other scientists helped avert genuine ecological disasters...
Inoltre, una nuova coscienza ambientale è subentrata nella massa, qualcosa di difficile da condannare tout court...
... The environmental scientists’ impact came not just through legislation but also through a new consciousness...
D'altra parte, l'enfasi di JS sulla creatività umana è una lezione per tutti...
... Julian Simon also had something important to contribute. He and many other economists argued that human creativity and market forces allow societies to adjust tco changing circumstances and to expand efficiency and productivity...
Paradossalmente, molti argomenti simoniani sono stati riciclati per la difesa della libera immigrazione (un tipico fenomeno perturbativo dell’ordine esistente)...
... Simon’s own studies, for example, countered unfounded attacks on immigrants as a burden on the American economy. His argument for the economic benefits of immigration was one of many factors that cleared the way for the major 1986 law legalizing the status of millions of immigrants...
La polarizzazione dello scontro lo ha reso in buona parte infruttuoso...
... Despite their respective strengths, both Ehrlich and Simon got carried away in their battle. The ready audience for their ideas encouraged them to make dramatic claims. Their unwillingness to concede anything in their often-vitriolic debate exacerbated critical weaknesses in each of their arguments...
Tanto per cominciare, l'ecologismo di oggi è forse ancora più ottuso e aggressivo di quello degli anni settanta, evidentemente un'occasione è stata perduta...
... human history over the past forty years has not conformed to Paul Ehrlich’s predictions. By the most basic measure, human populations have continued to grow and no population collapse or broad-scale famine—caused by population outstripping food supply—has occurred. To the contrary. With localized exceptions, life expectancy across the globe has risen, as have per capita incomes. Food production has kept pace with population growth. Energy remains abundant. Higher food and energy prices in recent years suggest short-term shortages, and perhaps a long-term tightening of the market, but not catastrophic failure. The discrepancies in average health and welfare among nations have declined rather than increased. Countries around the world generally continue to improve their well-being rather than slip backward into greater poverty and suffering...
L’emblema: lo stesso PE ripete ancora oggi come un disco rotto i soliti concetti...
... Ehrlich, however, remains convinced by the essential logic of his original bet. He declared in a 2011 interview that humans were on track to “destroy their life support systems” at which point “society as we know it is going to collapse.”...
Come se non bastasse la scommessa è stata ripetuta anche successivamente in forme leggermente diverse ma con esiti analoghi...
... In 2005, investment banker Matthew Simmons bet journalist John Tierney and Rita Simon (Julian’s widow) five thousand dollars that oil prices would more than triple from around sixty-five dollars to a 2010 annual average of more than two hundred dollars per barrel. But the 2010 price averaged just eighty dollars. Adjusted for inflation, oil prices increased less than 10 percent over the five-year period, nowhere close to Simmons’s dire forecast...
La più grande lezione impartita da JS? Il ruolo riequilibratore dei prezzi...
... Simon’s victory in his bet with Ehrlich drove home an important insight relevant to these energy markets: scarcity and abundance are in dynamic relationship with each other. Abundance does not simply progress steadily to scarcity. Scarcity, by leading to increased prices, spurs innovation and investment...
Ma la lezione impartita da Simon ha avuto anche effetti ambigui. Innanzitutto ha rassicurato forse troppo gli ottimisti. C’è il rischio che si siedano sugli allori pensando che tutto si risolve da sé...
... Julian Simon and other critics of environmentalism, however, have taken far too much comfort from extravagant and flawed predictions of scarcity and doom. Simon frequently argued that problems lead to solutions that leave humanity better off than before the problem arose. But by focusing solely and relentlessly on positive trends, Julian Simon made it more difficult to solve environmental problems...
Molti economisti oggi cercano di mediare proponendo una carbon tax, ovvero una soluzione che riconosca appieno il meccanismo dei prezzi cercando solo di rafforzarlo...
... many economists tend to favor taxes on pollution that would force economic decision-makers to factor external, social costs into their private choices...
Altro effetto pernicioso della vittoria di JS: ha finito per screditare la scienza (ambientale). I suoi avversari erano per lo più biologi...
... The most pernicious current reflection of Ehrlich and Simon’s clash is the ongoing political impasse over climate change. Inaccurate past claims about population growth and resource scarcity—such as Ehrlich’s forecast for massive famines due to food scarcity in the 1970s and 1980s—undermined the credibility of scientists and environmentalists advocating action on climate. “By repeatedly crying wolf,” the conservative judge Richard Posner wrote of Paul Ehrlich, “he has played into the hands of those who consider environmentalism a lunatic movement.”...
Oggi c'è chi vede complotti ovunque quando un climatologo fa le sue fosche previsioni.
Per molti i verdi sono rossi travestiti che promuovono in modo occulto l'interventismo governativo...
... Conservatives who questioned Ehrlich’s earlier dire claims have argued that climate warnings are just a new liberal strategy to expand government regulation and taxation...
Inoltre, le idee di JS sembrano fatte apposta per mettere in crisi i modelli al computer con i quali cerchiamo affannosamente di scrutare gli scenari futuri del nostro pianeta: come conteggiare infatti la creatività umana? Boh...
... What often gets lost in the climate debate are the lessons of the clash between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. There is a serious and significant discussion to be had over what policy actions to take, and when. How much will the impacts of climate change cost, and how urgent is the need for immediate action? There are two dramatically different versions of the future. Should we count on technological innovation and economic growth to help societies meet this new challenge and adapt to change?...
bet

domenica 9 aprile 2017

The Bet Paul Sabin

The Bet by Paul Sabin
You have 58 highlighted passages
You have 50 notes
Last annotated on April 9, 2017
IntroductionRead more at location 107
Note: ehrluch: fisso al carson show ad evocare la catastrofe diventando celebrities simon: a casina a mangiarsi le dita problema: la sovrapopolazione ci pirterá a carestie rovinose eh converte nixon che fonda l epa il legame tra cibo e demografia la controidea di simon: benvenuta la crescita di uomini: piú upmini più idee simon il convertito: temeva la bomba demogr la scommessa semplice: 5 materie 10 anni prezzi su o prezzi giù? 1000 dollari il great divide delk ambientalismo anni 70. vince simon e i conservatori prendono coraggio i precursori di eh: malthus quelli di simon: goodwin e engels reaganvs carter il dilemma filisofico: cosa conta nella vita? simob: solo l uomo e la sua felicitá. debito vs bentham eh: la natura. l uomo è solo una parte il dibattito attuale sul riscaldamento. cosa nn riproporre: la contrapposizione frontale. cosa riproporre: la passione il rigore e la chiarezza. imho: anche la scommessa come strumento epistemologico INTRO@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
January 1970.Read more at location 109
Paul Ehrlich, a thirty-seven-year-old biology professor at Stanford,Read more at location 109
Note: CHI Edit
Ehrlich had made his name two years earlier with a blockbuster jeremiad, The Population Bomb. “The battle to feed humanity is over,” Ehrlich warned in his book, predicting that hundreds of millions of people “are going to starve to death.”Read more at location 110
Note: IL LIBRO Edit
As Carson introduced Ehrlich to millions of ordinary Americans, a new environmentalism was dawning.Read more at location 113
Note: IL NUOVO AMBIENTALISMO DI STAMPO SC SC Edit
Nixon was about to create the Environmental Protection Agency.Read more at location 116
Note: INFLUENZA XSU BNIXSONJ Edit
Zero Population Growth, the organization that Ehrlich had founded to advance his agenda of population control.Read more at location 118
Note: L ORGANIZZAZIONE Edit
in Urbana, Illinois, a little-known business administration professor named Julian Simon, also thirty-seven, watched Ehrlich’s performances with growing dismay and envy. Carson asked Ehrlich about the relation between population growth and the food supply.Read more at location 121
Note: JS GUARDA LA TV. CIBO E POP Edit
Ehrlich said it was “already too late to avoid famines that will kill millions.”Read more at location 123
Note: c Edit
The Chicago-trained economist had recently written that processed fish, soybeans, and algae could “produce enough protein to supply present and future needs, and at low cost.”Read more at location 125
Note: PROTEINE X TUTTI IN ABBONDANZA Edit
sitting and grumbling alone in his living roomRead more at location 129
Note: IL SALOTTINO Edit
Simon and Ehrlich represented two poles in the bitter contest over the future that helped define the 1970s.Read more at location 131
Note: I DIE POLI ANNI 70 Edit
Ehrlich’s dire predictions underlay the era’s new environmental consciousness, whereas Simon’s increasing skepticism helped fuel a conservative backlash against federal regulatory expansion.Read more at location 132
Note: AMBIENTALISMO VS UNANESIMO E DEREGOLAMENTAZIONE Edit
Ehrlich commented broadly on nuclear power and endangered species, immigration and race relations. He readily denounced “growthmanic economists and profit-hungry businessmen”Read more at location 136
Note: LA LITANIA DI E. Edit
Meanwhile, Simon for years played the role of frustrated and largely ignored bystander. “What could I do? Go talk to five people?” he later asked.Read more at location 139
Note: LE FRUSTRAZIONI DI S. Edit
in the late 1960s, Simon too had argued urgently in favor of slowing population growth. He had written studies arguing that birth control programs were a “fantastic economic bargain” for countries seeking to raise incomes.Read more at location 141
Note: IL PASSATO DI SIMON Edit
Simon argued that more people meant more ideas,Read more at location 145
Note: L IDEA CRNTRALE X IL CAMBIO DI ROTTA Edit
Rather than sparking the world’s crises, population growth would help resolve them. People, as Simon titled his landmark 1981 tome, were The Ultimate Resource.Read more at location 145
Note: c Edit
In 1980, Simon challenged Ehrlich in Social Science Quarterly to a contest that directly tested their competing visions of the future, one apocalyptic and fearful of human excess, the other optimistic and bullish about human progress.Read more at location 148
Note: JS LANCIA LA SFIDA AGLI APOCALITTOCI Edit
Ehrlich agreed to bet Simon that the cost of chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten would increase in the next decade. It was a simple thousand-dollar wager:Read more at location 150
Note: LA SCOMMESSA Edit
five industrial metals, ten years, prices up or down.Read more at location 151
Ehrlich’s conviction reflected a more general sense after the 1973 Arab oil embargo that the world risked running out of vital resourcesRead more at location 153
Note: LA CRISI PETROLIFERA INFL PE Edit
Simon argued that markets and new technologies would drive prices down,Read more at location 154
Note: TECNOLOGIA Edit
The outcome of the bet would either provide ammunition for Ehrlich’s campaign against population growth and environmental calamity or promote Simon’s optimism about human resourcefulness through new technologies and market forces.Read more at location 156
Note: ESITO Edit
their bet resonated with the cultural clash occurring in the country as a whole.Read more at location 159
The bet also captured the starkly different paths of Democrat Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.Read more at location 159
Note: CULTURAL CLASH. NEOLIBERISMO Edit
Ehrlich’s widely publicized fears about population growth revived the arguments of the Reverend Thomas Malthus,Read more at location 176
Note: PE IL MALTHUSIANO Edit
Early critics of Malthus, however, such as the English philosopher William Godwin, anticipated Julian Simon’s critique of Ehrlich, mocking Malthus’s conviction that humanity was doomed to misery.Read more at location 185
Note: JS E WILLIAM DOODWIN Edit
Other nineteenth-century critics of Malthus, such as Friedrich Engels, thought that agricultural productivity could be “increased ad infinitum by the application of capital, labour and science.”Read more at location 189
Note: AANCHE ENGELS TRA I PRECURSORI DI JS Edit
What is the purpose of humans on earth? How should we measure the success of human societies? Simon was influenced by the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher. Bentham proposed that the “measure of right and wrong” in society should be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Following this logic, Julian Simon welcomed continued population growth because it meant that more people could live productive and meaningful lives.Read more at location 197
Note: IL NATALISMO DO SIMON INFLUENZATO ANCHE DA BENTHAM Edit
Simon did not speak in the elementary terms of “pain and pleasure.” But he also placed human welfare at the center of his moral universe.Read more at location 201
Note: L UOMO AL CENTRO Edit
Humanity, Ehrlich thought, could not serve as the measure of all things.Read more at location 204
Humans needed to accept their proper role in a larger balance of nature on earth.Read more at location 204
Note: PE JATURA AL CENTRO Edit
the bet epitomized the increasingly polarized rhetoric of American politics.Read more at location 208
Note: POLARIZZAZIONE Edit
Underlying differences in social valuesRead more at location 212
prominent political debates over climate change, for example, starting in the 1990s slipped into rhetorical ruts established in earlier debates over population growthRead more at location 213
Note: CLIMAT CHANGE E POP GROWTH. FILIAZIONE CULTURALE Edit
Instead of reading Paul Ehrlich’s clash with Julian Simon as a simple white hat–black hat morality tale, their story can move us beyond stereotyped portrayals of environmentalists and conservatives.Read more at location 216
Note: UNA STORIA ESEMPLARE Edit
CHAPTER ONE Biologist to the RescueRead more at location 220
Note: 1@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
CHAPTER SIX Betting the Future of the PlanetRead more at location 2950
Note: 6@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
Extreme voicesRead more at location 2951
partisanRead more at location 2951
Paul Ehrlich’s contribution—and that of environmental scientists as a whole after World War II—lay in the ability to reveal the deep connections between humans and nature and to show how the planet was changing. Through research and advocacy, Ehrlich and other scientists helped avert genuine ecological disasters,Read more at location 2957
Note: IL CONTRIBUTO DI E Edit
If scientists had not raised the alarm about declining stratospheric ozone, nations never would have passed the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which phased out chemicals that damage Earth’s protective cover against intense solar radiation.Read more at location 2960
Note: EZEMPIO DELL OZONO Edit
The environmental scientists’ impact came not just through legislation but also through a new consciousness.Read more at location 2965
Note: UNA NUOVA COSCIENZA Edit
Julian Simon also had something important to contribute. He and many other economists argued that human creativity and market forces allow societies to adjust to changing circumstances and to expand efficiency and productivity.Read more at location 2969
Note: CONTR. JS. CREATIVITAÀ UMANA Edit
Simon’s own studies, for example, countered unfounded attacks on immigrants as a burden on the American economy. His argument for the economic benefits of immigration was one of many factors that cleared the way for the major 1986 law legalizing the status of millions of immigrants.Read more at location 2978
Note: UNO STRANO NESSO: ARG ANTI CATASTR SONO ARG PRO IMM Edit
Despite their respective strengths, both Ehrlich and Simon got carried away in their battle. The ready audience for their ideas encouraged them to make dramatic claims. Their unwillingness to concede anything in their often-vitriolic debate exacerbated critical weaknesses in each of their arguments.Read more at location 2981
Note: PE BS JS. UNO SCONTRO POLARIZZATO E INFRUTTUOSO Edit
human history over the past forty years has not conformed to Paul Ehrlich’s predictions. By the most basic measure, human populations have continued to grow and no population collapse or broad-scale famine—caused by population outstripping food supply—has occurred. To the contrary. With localized exceptions, life expectancy across the globe has risen, as have per capita incomes. Food production has kept pace with population growth. Energy remains abundant. Higher food and energy prices in recent years suggest short-term shortages, and perhaps a long-term tightening of the market, but not catastrophic failure. The discrepancies in average health and welfare among nations have declined rather than increased. Countries around the world generally continue to improve their well-being rather than slip backward into greater poverty and suffering.Read more at location 2983
Note: LA SOSTANZIALE SCONFITTA DI PE NN HA RESO L ECOLOGISMO MENO AGGRESSIVO Edit
In 2005, investment banker Matthew Simmons bet journalist John Tierney and Rita Simon (Julian’s widow) five thousand dollars that oil prices would more than triple from around sixty-five dollars to a 2010 annual average of more than two hundred dollars per barrel. But the 2010 price averaged just eighty dollars. Adjusted for inflation, oil prices increased less than 10 percent over the five-year period, nowhere close to Simmons’s dire forecast.Read more at location 3001
Note: LA SCOMMESSA RIPSTUTA SUL PETROLIO. STESSO ESITO Edit
Simon’s victory in his bet with Ehrlich drove home an important insight relevant to these energy markets: scarcity and abundance are in dynamic relationship with each other. Abundance does not simply progress steadily to scarcity. Scarcity, by leading to increased prices, spurs innovation and investment.Read more at location 3012
Note: INSEGNAMENTO JS. I PREZZI Edit
Understanding this cyclical processRead more at location 3015
Ehrlich, however, remains convinced by the essential logic of his original bet. He declared in a 2011 interview that humans were on track to “destroy their life support systems” at which point “society as we know it is going to collapse.”Read more at location 3017
Note: PE DISCO ROTTO. ANCORA OGGI RIPETE LA LITANIA Edit
Julian Simon and other critics of environmentalism, however, have taken far too much comfort from extravagant and flawed predictions of scarcity and doom. Simon frequently argued that problems lead to solutions that leave humanity better off than before the problem arose. But by focusing solely and relentlessly on positive trends, Julian Simon made it more difficult to solve environmental problems.Read more at location 3023
Note: JS. RISCHIO: TROPPO RASSICURATI DALLE VITTORIE Edit
many economists tend to favor taxes on pollution that would force economic decision-makers to factor external, social costs into their private choices.Read more at location 3037
Note: UNA POSOZIONE MEDIANA: CARBON TAX Edit
The most pernicious current reflection of Ehrlich and Simon’s clash is the ongoing political impasse over climate change. Inaccurate past claims about population growth and resource scarcity—such as Ehrlich’s forecast for massive famines due to food scarcity in the 1970s and 1980s—undermined the credibility of scientists and environmentalists advocating action on climate. “By repeatedly crying wolf,” the conservative judge Richard Posner wrote of Paul Ehrlich, “he has played into the hands of those who consider environmentalism a lunatic movement.”Read more at location 3047
Note: EFFETTO COLLATERALE. PE HA SCREDITATO L AMBIENTALISMO Edit
Conservatives who questioned Ehrlich’s earlier dire claims have argued that climate warnings are just a new liberal strategy to expand government regulation and taxation.Read more at location 3056
Note: L ACCUSA: ANGURIE Edit
What often gets lost in the climate debate are the lessons of the clash between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. There is a serious and significant discussion to be had over what policy actions to take, and when. How much will the impacts of climate change cost, and how urgent is the need for immediate action? There are two dramatically different versions of the future. Should we count on technological innovation and economic growth to help societies meet this new challenge and adapt to change?Read more at location 3073
Note: LA BET E IL GW. COME CONTEGGIARE LA CREATIVITÀ UMANA? Edit