Ronald Bailey on How Free Markets and Human Ingenuity Can Save the Planet
“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so,†warned the famed British television naturalist David Attenborough in the January Radio Times. He added: “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us.†Would-be prophets of disaster from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich have been preaching imminent ecological doom for centuries now. All such prophecies have so far failed. But is Attenborough right; is it different this time? Probably not, Ramez Naam argues in The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey investigates which one is right.