A Lesson To Pay Attention To

John Tierney has an opinion piece in the Kansas City Star that provides a little bit of perspective on environmental scares. It is worth keeping in mind as the global warming debate continues.

In 1968, the year after the U.S. population reached 200 million, Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk and other scientific luminaries signed a full-page newspaper ad. It pictured a beatific baby in diapers who was labeled, in large letters, “Threat to Peace.”

“It is only being realistic,” the scientists warned, “to say that skyrocketing population growth may doom the world we live in.”

They shared the concerns of Paul Ehrlich, who was on the best-seller lists warning of unprecedented famines overseas in the 1970s and food riots on the streets of America in the 1980s.

Today, when the 300 millionth American is born, the parents will not be worrying about a national shortage of food. If anything, they’ll worry about their child becoming obese.

“Overpopulation” is history’s oldest environmental crisis, and it’s the most instructive for making sense of today’s debates about energy and climate change.

Four decades ago, scientists were so determined to prevent famines that they analyzed the feasibility of putting “fertility control agents” in public drinking water. Physicist William Shockley suggested using sterilization to impose a national limit on the number of births.

Those intellectuals didn’t persuade Americans to adopt their policies, but they had more effect overseas.

Tierney goes on to point out the untended consequences of the one child per family rule adopted by China. They are facing a shortage of workers to help support the rest of an aging population. The focus on short-term solutions is having – and will continue to have – long term negative consequences.

Tierney is not doing this to negate any attempt at solutions to the issue of global warming. He points it out to remind people that many of the short-term radical solutions being championed right now may have dire future consequences. It would be a very good idea to remember that as solutions are advanced in the policy arena. Some "solutions" will have severe negative effects on the economy and the standard of living.