Paul Ehrlich founded the neo-Malthusian movement with his 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, and John Holdren was an instant convert. In 1971, mentor-and-disciple wrote:
…“We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one – whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen – is hardly grounds for complacency.)”
Skeptics of climate alarmism have often trotted out the fact that a number of climate scientists sounded the alarm over global cooling before they sounded the alarm over global warming–an argument for humility in the face of complexity, uncertainty, and change.
Global cooling was more than fringe thinking. As Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich wrote in their 1996 book, Betrayal of Science and Reason (p. 34): …
Despite all the pressure on him, energy is the perfect area for Barack Obama to do nothing hasty. For decades, activists and foreigners have lamented the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have an energy policy. This is, of course, nonsense. Simply because we don’t have a big E big P Energy Policy doesn’t mean we don’t have one at all. Compared to most other countries, our energy policy is most notable for the things it doesn’t do, as in the doctors’ creed, “First, do no harm.”
And energy policy is now threatening to intersect with economic policy, first, as rising unemployment suggests to many that renewable energy subsidies offer an attractive use of funds but also as the government considers assistance for the US automobile industry (at least the home-grown sections of it).…