Paul Sabin on Ehrlich, Simon and the Bet

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2014

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Paul Sabin of Yale University and author of The Bet talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book. Sabin uses the bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon--a bet over whether natural resources are getting scarcer as population grows--as a lens for examining the evolution of the environmental movement and its status today. Sabin considers the successes and failures of the movement and the challenges of having nuanced public policy discussions on issues where both sides have passionate opinions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:07.8	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org where you can
0:13.6	subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's
0:18.1	conversation. We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever
0:22.7	done going back to 2006. Our email address is maladycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:31.6	Today is January 30th 2014 and my guest is Paul Saban, Professor of History and American Studies
0:38.6	at Yale University. He coordinates the Yale Environmental History Working Group and helps
0:43.7	to run Yale's undergraduate environmental studies major. He is the author of the bet. Paul
0:49.5	Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and our gamble over Earth's future, which is the subject of today's
0:54.8	episode. Paul, welcome to Econ Talk. Thanks for having me on. The bet is a portrait of two men,
1:02.1	Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon, and a very interesting bet that they made, but it's more than that.
1:06.9	It's the portrait of an era, the birth of the environmental movement, and how it evolved over time.
1:12.7	But let's start with the two men. Sketch out the arc of their lives and their careers. They were
1:16.8	similar in certain ways, but very different in others, as you explain. So start with their views
1:21.7	on population and resource scarcity, which is where they clashed. How did they differ there?
1:27.1	Sure. Well, Paul Ehrlich is a biologist who studied butterflies and has had a long career at
1:33.7	Stanford University. He is best known for his 1968 blockbuster book called The Population Bomb,
1:41.1	which warned that overpopulation, population growth was going to lead to
1:46.0	food scarcity, famines, possibly thermonuclear war, a spread of disease, a variety of different
1:52.2	types of disasters. And he was brought to the even more to the national consciousness, I guess,
1:59.1	when he was invited onto the Johnny Carson show in 1970 and became a very frequent guest on the
2:05.1	tonight's show. And he is a very witty, combative, good debater, just conversationalist.
	...

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