If bad news "sells", and it does, then Ehrlich's news was a great example. "End of society as we know it" is pretty bad news and it got the public's attention.
Individuals started asking if the alarmism was really justified. Economist William Nordhaus said that the doom scenario "allowed for no technological progress, no new discovery of resources," no human inventiveness - in short, the model did not represent how human society really works. He suggested that human beings have more options than butterflies.
Julian Simon was another scholar who became convinced that people can think and imagine and adjust to changing conditions. It became a conviction with him that, far from being a plague or a curse on the earth, people are the ultimate resource to each other and to the planet; they're not just consumer units.
Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich were headed to a face-off.
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