The End of Doom

[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”68452″ width=”590″ height=”360″]

“Are human beings smart enough to overcome scarcities through their intellectual powers?”

Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey says this is the question that scientists and economists have been grappling with for decades. In a talk in front of a live, in-studio audience at Reason’s LA headquarters, Bailey answered that question with a resounding, “Yes!”

Bailey previewed his upcoming book, The End of Doom, in this thought-provoking talk of the same name. By documenting numerous errors in prediction from the past, from Paul Ehlrich’s famous commodities bet with Julian Simon to unfounded concerns about “peak oil,” Bailey takes on the doomsayers and argues that it’s much more rational to expect a more prosperous, resource-rich, and ecologically sound future than it is to fear armageddon.

Sounds like interesting stuff, perhaps projecting out into the future some of the material covered in Bob Zubrin’s 2012 book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

I wonder if al Jazeera will have Bailey on to discuss his book?

Related: In the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens asks, “Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia? Climate-change alarmists warn us about coming food shortages. They said the same in 1968.”

Considering that the sun is estimated to expire in about five billion years, it’s only a matter of time before environmentalism’s many not-so-final countdowns (just keep scrolling) pan out…