Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
I was amused to come across Tom Friedman's utterly unoriginal, stale, and passé column in the New York Times last week entitled "The Earth is Full," in which he warns us all of the coming population catastrophe on planet Earth. We're running out of resources, Tom screeches. Pretty soon there will be no more water, no more trees, too many people!
[W]e are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths.
This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once.
Today, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Ricochet's own Bill McGurn has the antidote to Thomas Friedman's bad case of Chicken Little syndrome.
When the experts tell you there are too many people, they don't mean too many Swedes. They mean too many poor people, mostly brown or black or yellow...
[...]
...[T]he fear: that as people are eating better and living longer and making their way up the ladder, they will want more of the things that we take for granted—cars, air conditioners, refrigerators and so on. Indeed, the really big dreamers might even hope one day to have for their families the kind of carbon-footprint-maximizing manse that Mr. Friedman has for his family in Maryland.
Ironically, by almost any human measure—food consumption, life expectancy, access to clean water, etc.—life is getting better, not worse. So why the recurring predictions of catastrophe? Partly it's because the apostles of population control assume that resources are fixed and immune to human creativity or effort. In this view, human beings are primarily seen as mouths instead of minds.
The 1970s has many ugly legacies. Surely, however, the cruelest was this leading Western export: the idea that the Earth has reached its limit with us, and that the solution is to persuade other folks who don't yet have what we do to lower both their populations and their expectations.
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Aug '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Thanks for the peek over the WSJ paywall. Very rebellious! ;-)
May '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
The article is currently behind a paywall, but the bit quoted above is great.
Jul '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
This is not science fiction. Tom Friedman is what happens when any sense of skepticism and any sense of humility are thrown off a cliff at the same time.
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
After reading Christopher Hitchens' thoughts on 'the art of the feud' the other day, I'm really hoping to see a McGurn-Friedman feud crop up here. I see my role as the puny kid in the schoolyard egging on the two bigger kids to "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Jun '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Has Friedman looked at the fertility rates around the world? Yes, a lot of poor countries continue to have high ones. But I think more than half have rates below replacement levels (which will take a while to see, and until we do population will continue to increase). But some countries, Japan and Russia, are already seeing net population decreases. Many others are not far behind.
Isn't it ironic that liberals like Friedman want both population control and no changes to entitlements. That, folks, is cognitive dissonance.
Edited on Jun 15, 2011 at 7:07amJun '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
I think Jonah Goldberg has first dibs on Friedman.
Aug '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
The World Is Flat. The World Is Full.
The world sounds like a pita pocket.
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 1:44pmJun '11
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
A picture of his estate should accompany anything with his byline.
Sep '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Tom Freidman's House is Big and Empty
Jun '11
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
I like what you did there.
Franco
Tom Freidman's House is Big and Empty · Jun 14 at 1:55pm
Feb '11
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
One thing that clowns like Friedman fail to understand is that people and organizations can creatively CHANGE their mix of resource use to adjust for scarcities. When England was reaching "peak wood," the mining of coal for heating, and the use of coke as a replacement charcoal in ironworking, greatly reduced the economy's "wood adiction." At present, Toyota is working on electric motors that avoid most of the need for the rare earths that have been of so much concern lately. GE has undertaken a multi-pronged approach to reduce the need for rhenium in jet engines and other turbomachinery. And so on.
Feb '11
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
If Friedman needs to worry, here's a real problem:
Fertility in the civilized world is falling. When we're gone, who'll feed the rest of the world, or come up with and give away the innovations that'll allow them to feed themselves (and cure themselves, and generally live past 25).
Feb '11
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
If Friedman wants a quick fix, the most efficient way to keep populations down: put fundamentalist Muslims in charge. The despair causes wombs to shrivel (Iran, Turkey, etc.) and the killing culls existing stock (Sudan, Iran). With luck, the Russians will want to help (Chechnya).
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Friedman's viewpoint is all the rage amongst the publicly-subsidized portion of the venture capital industry (e.g., CalPERS investment recipients), as also the federally supported portion of academia--which is to say just about all of it apart from the indispensable Hillsdale College. The imperative to flog the citizenry into downsizing lifestyles and adopting expensive, unreliable "green energy" springs from an innately pessimistic view of human nature and ordered liberty.
A minor quibble with Brother Bill: the philosophy of inevitable calamity did not start in the 1970s but goes back at least two centuries to Thomas Malthus. Although, I grant that Jimmy Carter did much to graft this alien pessimism into the American psyche.
Nov '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
@George Savage, Thanks for bring up Malthus. You beat me to it.
Dec '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
You mean the one bigger kid (McGurn) and the one runny-nosed twerp who thinks he knows more than he really does (Friedman).
Dec '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Why is it that the First-World Liberals who fret about this never volunteer to do something about it? After all, according to their own dogma, their noble self-sacrifice would ameliorate as much environmental impact as the elimination of scores of Third-World peasants.
Oct '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
Idiot elitists. They will never sacrifice any of the comforts they enjoy, yet have no problem taking stuff away from the rest of us inferior non-elites. Thomas Friedman is basically saying "Sorry Africa: you can't grow, there isn't enough resources. Instead of growing your economy and reducing birth rates via the wealth effect, you have to use coercion and forced abortion instead."
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 4:27pmAug '10
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
I am still misreading the title as "Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Man's Fried Chicken Littleism".
Re: Bill McGurn Takes on Tom Friedman's Chicken Littleism
My little quibble: I did not say this *began* in the 1970s. What I said is that we are living through a rerun of the 1970s where the news media and the "science" community are peddling population catastrophe. George is right that it all traces to Malthus. By contrast, Adam Smith was a more the merrier type. It is always interesting to me that the folks who are always telling us there are too many people never say there is too much government.