This time is different. Matt Ridley

Vía Matt Ridley.


Extract:

Grantham's problem is that he is saying exactly what doomsters have ben saying all my life about myriad environmental issues and they have been wrong every time. Go back 40 years to 1971 and recall the continual dirge of dire doom that those of us who became teenagers that year were subjected to over the next four decades. The grown-ups told us with terrible certainty that

the population explosion was unstoppable;

global famine was inevitable;

crop yield increases would peter out;

food aid to India was futile;

a cancer epidemic caused by pesticides in the environment would shorten our lives;

the desert was advancing at two miles a year;

nuclear fallout was a growing risk;

nuclear winter was an inevitable consequence of an inevitable nuclear war;

Ebola, hanta virus and swine flu pandemics were overdue;