In a classic sketch from Beyond the Fringe, a group of cultists gather for their predicted end of the world. When it fails to occur on schedule, the cult leader remarks, Well, it’s not quite the conflagration I’d been banking on. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow… we must get a winner one day. Environmentalism being a modern end-of-the-world religious cult, its prophets are similarly immune from their obvious failure to get anything right.
Paul Ehrlich has a long history of being wrong about nearly everything. Naturally, he’s a superstar of environmentalism.
One of Ehrlich’s best known wrongnesses was his 1980 wager with economist Julian Simon. It was simple: Ehrlich, who was convinced that the world’s resources were quickly running out and starvation and poverty were imminent in even the richest nations, was allowed to choose $1,000 worth of commodities that he believed would become scarcer and more expensive over a nominated time period. At the end of the period chosen, the inflation-adjusted prices would be calculated. If the materials had become more expensive in real terms – and therefore, scarcer – Ehrlich would win. The loser would have to pony up the price difference.
Ehrlich lost. In 1990, Simon received a cheque for $576.07. The real price of the commodities had fallen by 36%.
But, in an inversion of Pete’n’Dud’s cultists, Ehrlich’s cult-followers insist that Simon just got lucky. In fact, it was Ehrlich who was lucky: Simon had reduced the bet amount from the original $10,000 to just $1,000. Thanks to this generosity, Ehrlich saved $5,184.63.
Still, cultists rarely admit defeat. Ehrlich’s fans claim that, had the bet been held over a different period, Ehrlich would have won. In fact, they insist that Ehrlich would have won more than half of any given ten-year periods.
But what if it was calculated over a longer time?
An analysis that covered the longest possible time period – 1900 to 2019 (the US CPI only dates back to 1913) and allowing for the “war clause” of the original bet. The “war clause” excluded periods that the US was at war: thus the years for World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror are excluded. This leaves 73 ten-year periods.
Simon would still have won nearly three-quarters of the time, with a return of nearly 20%. Allowing for population increase, Simon would have won even more often.
But the real winners are ordinary people. Converting the price of the chosen commodities to hours of work, blue-collar workers saw a 784% increase in the amount of commodities earned for the same amount of labour.
Academics can argue the minutiae and shift the goalposts to whichever position best suits their prejudices, but the overall trend is undeniable. Contrary to the Malthusian doomsaying of Ehrlich and his fellow environmentalists, resources have become cheaper and more abundant in relation to the labour time needed to buy them.
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