The End of Doom

10/02/15 • 59 min

We discuss the growth and maturity of the modern environmental movement from Rachel Carson to Paul Ehrlich and Naomi Klein. From overpopulation and pollution to pesticide use, mass animal extinctions and peak oil to global cooling and global warming (now climate change) and genetically modified food, there seems to be no shortage of potential catastrophes for us to fret over. Is humanity truly perpetually poised on the brink of destruction? Or are the solutions these environmental millenarians propose the true threat to our species?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Ronald Bailey’s new book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century is a must read on this topic.

We also recommend Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and Brink Lindsey’s The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture to get a better understanding of the power of markets to allocate resources in increasingly efficient ways.

Paul Ehrlich’s 1971 book The Population Bomb is mentioned in this show. It reads as fantastic science fiction today, though the predictions Ehrlich makes were taken quite seriously when the book was first published. Similarly, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) predicted a world in which it was common for people to die of cancer-related illnesses (caused by pollutants) at the age of 45. The book was instrumental in launching the modern-day environmental movement.
Bailey also mentions an article he wrote in 2009 about the National Academy of Sciences predictions in 1980 of what the world would look like in 2010, “How Green Is Your Crystal Ball?”

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Show Notes and Further Reading

Ronald Bailey’s new book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century is a must read on this topic.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

"Net Neutrality" vs. Internet Freedom

Why is the internet community—and now, John Oliver—so irate about the state of the Internet? Berin Szoka says the debate over “net neutrality” stopped being about neutrality years ago, and has become a debate over something else entirely, with nothing less than the very nature of the Internet at stake.
With the Federal Communications Commission’s ruling earlier this year, are we going to see a less dynamic, less innovative, less consumer-friendly Internet?
Show Notes and Further Reading

TechFreedom’s website is a wealth of information on current issues in technology policy.

The Tech Liberation Front group blog is also a good way to keep updated.

This Free Thoughts episode is partially about common carrier obligations and how the world of public utilities that we now live in came to be.

Berin mentions this post from Dan Rayburn questioning Netflix’s assertion that ISPs were behind apparent service slowdowns last year.

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Next Episode

"Ideological Dorks"

“Your hero economists are my hero economists.”

We talk about a variety of topics on this episode, including cultural conservativism and libertarianism, whether libertarians are more at home on the right or left, Goldberg’s 2009 book, Liberal Fascism, and the rise of outsider candidates on the political right and what they may (or may not) be signalling about the preferences of the electorate.

Show Notes and Further Reading

Goldberg’s books, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (2013) and Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change (2009).

Charles C. W. Cooke’s new book The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future (2015).

The History News Network’s Symposium on Liberal Fascism.

David Oshinsky’s New York Times review of Liberal Fascism.

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