[.ca] The Ultimate Resource 2 (ISBN 0691003815)

From Amazon.com:
Julian L. Simon is the world's greatest contrarian. The Ultimate Resource 2--an update, not a sequel, despite the title--skewers the sacred cows of environmentalism, population control, and Paul Ehrlich. In the contest between resource scarcity and human ingenuity, Simon bets the farm on the ability of intelligent people to overcome their problems. Thankfully, he is not a theorist. This book lays out convincing empirical evidence for Simon's prediction of a prosperous future. The key to progress is not state-run conservation programs, he says, but economic and political freedom. Only then can talented minds properly apply themselves to our earthly dilemmas.

One of the great books of the 20th century:
Rarely is a book written that fundamentally changed something about my worldview. Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource 2 (UR2) is such a book. Simon's book shows that man is a born problem-solver--given enough freedom to improvise. I walk the earth today knowing a "secret" that few others know. After reading UR2, I know that humanity can resolve its fundamental problems: energy shortages, overcrowding, environmental degredation. The only concievable critics of UR2 are the regulators and manipulators of human affairs who use their positions of power to thwart innovation throgh nanny-state governance. Simon's analysis of the realities of environmental crises is the clearest I have read anywhere. Most of what we think we know about the environment is piece-meal: one fact or another, a few anecdotes lumped together into a conclusion. We hear that the Ozone Layer is disintegrating or that acid rain is killing lakes in the Northeast, or about Love Canal or various Superfund sites. Without a larger perspective, it all seems scary. Simon blows all of the hysteria away by stating that there is only one truly valid measure of the overall state of the environment: average life expectancy. By this standard, the environment has been improving for a century. Humans are healthier, and more comfortable than they have ever been. The Ultimate Resource 2 is itself a valuable resource that should be prominently displayed in every home library. The hours I have invested in reading it have already been paid back in the form of great stimulating conversation with other people. Simon regards human innovation as the ultimate resource, but I think that the truth is actually much more valuable and rare--and in terms of this commodity, Simon's book provides the equivalent of a pot of gold.

Know Thine Enemy:
Sadly, in order to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Reagan and both Bush administrations and probably much of the Republican Party, this book is a must read. But it must be read carefully and critically. Look at the footnotes, the sources referenced and their ages. Julian Simon, the late University of Maryland economist, devoted the last thirty-five years of his life to refuting the proposition that world population size must be limited or disaster will ensue. In the course of three dozen articles and several books he developed a detailed thesis based on his fanatical belief in the value of all human life, even potential human life, and in human ingenuity and infallibility in problem solving. The Ultimate Resource 2 is his magnum opus. Simon's final product is a richly footnoted tour de force in the fine intellectual tradition of Rush Limbaugh. Like Limbaugh, Simon searches out the most extreme quotes from his opponents, pulls them out of context, and holds them up to ridicule. In Simon's case this process is especially aided by the advantage of hindsight: he selects quotes from sources usually thirty, sometimes fifty, and even two hundred years old. Simon's desperation to be taken seriously and his hopeless lack of information once he steps out of his area of expertise (economics) is especially well illustrated in his Chapter 18 on "Environmental Resource Scares." Under "Definitely Disproven Threats" he lumps coffee as a cause for pancreatic cancer, cell phones as a cause of brain cancer, fluoride in drinking water, and Alar, for all of which the scientific consensus is in agreement, with asbestos, DDT, and lead, for which the scientific consensus certainly is not. In so doing Simon demonstrates a misunderstanding of the scientific process. One study, let alone one unfounded hypothesis, does not establish scientific truth, nor does one study refute it. It does not require keen observation to note that we didn't all starve to death in the 1970's as predicted in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb or to note that the reason was a very considerable advance in agricultural science (The Green Revolution). Simon wishes us to believe (Chapter 5) that "the overwhelming consensus of respected agricultural economists" never thought there was any danger of famine in the 1970's and that Ehrlich's prediction was purely a scare tactic. The devil is in the details. Simon's footnote for "the overwhelming consensus" of agriculture economists is that eminent scientific journal, The Washington Post. Careful inspection of the book's many footnotes reveal precious little primary source material of the type that one might expect from an economist, e.g. statistics from the Department of Agriculture. Most footnotes are to newspaper articles or the precious few authors in Simon's intellectual tradition. Ironically, much of the progress in standard of living perceived by the well-to-do in the U.S. in the last thirty years is directly attributable to the wake-up call contained in The Silent Spring and The Population Bomb. Yes, our cars smell better, some of our lakes and streams have come back to life, and we are at least aware of impending resource problems and working on them. Simon's devotion to the triumph of human ingenuity is based on perceived trends observed in the last thirty years that owe much to the environmental movement. Simon's thesis is thus: the environmental movement was based on bad science and bad information, the "progress" observed in the last thirty years is attributable to human numbers, ingenuity, and economics. Therefore, there never was a problem and we can all go marching merrily into future with no limits in food, space, raw materials, or energy. This is religion, not reality. That it should become the intellectual basis on which our current government functions is travesty. YES, read The Ultimate Resource 2. But don't stop there. When you find yourself bewildered by Simon's concepts like the "non-finiteness" of resources or the idea of 500 billion human beings on this planet (there are six billion now), read the Ehrlichs' most recent work, The Betrayal of Science and Reason.

The world is complicated:
I have not read the full book, but from what I have read Simon has a strong Economist's view. The main reason I read the sections of the book that I did was that I was evaluating the world3 model that appears in the book Beyond the Limits and Limits to Growth. Simon correctly points out that world3's simulation of nonrenewable resource is unrealistic because it ignores the ability to substitute one resource for another and ignores the information that price can convey. This of course is expected from an economist since any econ 101 class will discuss substitution of one good for another and the fact that demand will decrease if the cost goes up. On the other hand, he often ignores the complexity of the problems that others do address. For example, he states that the amount of agricultural land is not a problem, since an area the size of downtown Houston could feed the world. What he igores is how many resourses such as energy, fertilizer, etc would be required to do that (hint, more energy than the world produces). World3 got that part right, since it correctly predicted that humanity would still have enough food in 2000, however, it also predicted that substantially more nonland resources would be need to do so. The world is complicated, and looking at it from just one perspective, such as an economist's, like Julian Simon does will give you a biased view of it. This book is useful if you want that perspective, but if that is the only perspective you have, you will be wrong. Josh Cogliati

Much better Cornucopian perspective than Lomborg:
While I do not agree with the conclusions that Simon and colleagues reached after presenting their data, this book is a much more rigorous treatise than Lomborg's recent book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", that has been given undue publicity. Many of Lomborg's ideas are premised on this book. If you really want the Cornucopian perspective read this rather than Lomborg.

Brilliant!:
Julian Simon makes sense. He's influencing a new generation of brilliant writers like Paco Ahlgren. This book is the direction of future thinking.