(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Ehrlich got his prediction wrong. It looked like his math was right: limitless population growth to go along with a fixed amount of resources on our planet meant to him a future of famine and doom. He was sure that supplies of resources would become increasingly expensive and run out.
Another professor, Julian Simon, developed a different hunch. So they made a bet. Ehrlich bet that certain metals (he chose them) would go up in price over ten years, Simon bet they would go down. Simon won the bet.
As a Forbes writer puts it, "The old pessimists [like Ehrlich] made very poor forecasts. Famine did not kill millions of people. The air in developed countries got cleaner, not dirtier. The world produced more food, not less."
Why didn't Ehrlich's mathematical model work? Because each new person is not just another mouth to feed. Along with the mouth comes a mind, millions of brain cells, and creative imagination.
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