Ronald Bailey on How Free Markets and Human Ingenuity Can Save the Planet

Credit: Naam

“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.