“Only a relatively large population able to engage in a complex division of labour in the context of trade, industrialization and urbanization can reap the benefits of the feedback loop between technological innovation, increased economic prosperity, and population growth.”

“The most resilient solution for a cleaner earth and better climate, even with the spectre of anthropogenic climate change, is that of intensive growth thanks to, and not in spite of, a large population.”

– Joanna Szurmak (below)

Q. Joanna, you are a new name in the sustainable development field as co-author (with Pierre Desrochers) of Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change (2018). How did you get to that point?

A. I am new in most areas of scholarship familiar to MasterResource readers. If they happen to have an interest in how amorphous hydrogenated carbon can be made to behave like a semiconductor, they will find my publications from the late 1990s.

Editor Note: This post is by two leading scholars working in the Julian Simon, Austrian School, Institutionalist School traditions. Authors of Population Bombed!, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak are important figures at MasterResource.

Even greater creativity and market complexity can be observed in the history of the petroleum production and refining industries. Market institutions and incentives provide the framework from which a plenitude of individuals and companies make their contribution.

Black, Black Progress

Petroleum was first sought after in western Pennsylvania in the 1850s, as it proved a more economical source of kerosene (a combustible hydrocarbon used for illumination), which had previously been produced from coal, oil shale, and bitumen. Kerosene was seen as a superior and more reliable alternative to animal and vegetable oils, the best of which were derived from sperm whales.…

“I began publishing Julian Simon’s upbeat analytical articles on the benefits of population growth…. [O]ur ‘Econ Update’ newsletter was mailed to every high school with a debate program. Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource thus joined the battle of ideas against ‘Growth DAs’ in debate classes, clubs, and tournaments across the country.”

When I worked at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in New York in the mid-1980s, Julian Simon used to call from time to time. Sometime he would send a letter with just a leaf inside.

High school debate was my connection to Julian Simon. 

Discovering Julian Simon

I learned about The Ultimate Resource (1981) from Andrea Rich’s Laissez-Faire Books catalog. A few years earlier, Economics in Argumentation had outsourced a debate resource guide to a former debater for the national high school debate topic.…

“In the shift towards environmentalism, rich people have increasingly lost track of the need to improve the standards of living of working class and poor people who do not have access to cheap, reliable and scalable power sources.”

“The communist drive to overthrow the privilege of the few resulted in extreme authoritarianism and the deaths of millions of people. Further attempts to lie about our natures and to displace our instinctive drives will result in misery.”

Part II today completes a point-by-point rebuttal of executive producer Jeff Gibbs’s defense of Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans. Points 1–10 were covered yesterday; 11–20 follow below.

11) Fairy tales of green technology saving the planet protect us from the full weight of just how bad things are and from making a real plan to save ourselves and a planet worth living on.…