“Ehrlich and other green activists also remained oblivious to the fact that the correlation between standards of living and pollution level is overwhelmingly in the direction of ‘richer is cleaner’.”

“Population catastrophists, however, constantly remind us of Hegel’s alleged observation that ‘If theory and facts disagree, so much the worse for the facts’.”

Pierre Desrochers, associate professor of geography at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, is a leading classical liberal scholar in the fields of economic development, technological innovation, business/environment interaction, energy policy, and food policy. An expert on the works and worldview of Julian Simon (1932–98), Desrochers has contributed a number of features at MasterResource that are listed at the end of this post.

Most recently, Professor Desrochers celebrated the 25th anniversary of THE BET, the most famous wager in the history of economics between optimist/realist Simon and neo-Malthusian doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, with two opinion-page editorials.…

Julian Simon’s The Economics of Population Growth (1977) was hailed as a “path-breaking work” that offered “a new paradigm in the Kuhnian sense” (Joseph Spengler, quoted in Simon, 2002: 256).

The overused term “paradigm” must be applied with caution, however, because few new ideas really create paradigms, and paradigms can be wrong. Also, contra Kuhn, there are examples of science cumulatively approaching the truth short of revolution (Weinberg). Still, Simon put together the parts of an alternative worldview that continues to penetrate its way into the scientific orthodoxy, particularly in economics (Bradley, 2000: 19–20).

Simon’s extraordinary science (in Kuhnian terms) reached two major conclusions:

(1) a growing population can improve virtually all environmental welfare indicators; and

(2) scarcity measures of mineral (“depletable”) resources are not qualitatively different from that of other economic goods.…

“New improvements promise to make the website even more interesting and useful. Dozens of new datasets have been added and existing datasets updated. Also, the website is now “responsive” and may be viewed and used more easily on mobile devices, such as iPhones, Androids and iPads. Moreover, the website is now optimized for all major browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Explorer.”

Evidence from academic institutions and international organizations shows dramatic improvements in human well-being. These improvements are especially striking in the developing world.

Unfortunately, there is often a wide gap between the reality and public perception, including that of many policymakers, scholars in unrelated fields, and intelligent lay persons. To make matters worse, the media emphasizes bad news, while ignoring many positive long-term trends.

HumanProgress.org, a Cato Institute project with funding from the Searle and Templeton foundations, intends to correct misperceptions regarding the state of humanity through the presentation of empirical data that focuses on long-term developments.…

“While we think that policies and institutions compatible with freedom and openness are important factors in promoting human progress, we let the evidence speak for itself. We hope that this website leads to a greater appreciation of the improving state of the world and stimulates an intelligent debate on the drivers of human progress.”

– HumanProgress.org (Cato Institute)

Kudos to Cato for their new website portal, HumanProgress.org, which brings into one place the statistics of human welfare with reference to the socio-economic conditions responsible for it. The mission and status of this new website is discussed below.

A Julian Simon Institute?

I often lamented the absence of a Julian Simon Institute to tackle the area of ‘sustainability’ or “sustainable development,’ which covers so many things relating to population and progress. …