Synopses & Reviews
Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon led a vigorous challenge to conventional beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution of the environment, the effects of immigration, and the "perils of overpopulation." The comprehensive data, careful quantitative research, and economic logic contained in the first edition of
The Ultimate Resource questioned widely held professional judgments about the threat of overpopulation, and Simon's celebrated bet with Paul Ehrlich about resource prices in the 1980s enhanced the public attention--both pro and con--that greeted this controversial book.
Now Princeton University Press presents a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Resource. The new volume is thoroughly updated and provides a concise theory for the observed trends: Population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunity and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortages occurred. The book also tackles timely issues such as the supposed rate of species extinction, the "vanishing farmland crisis," and the wastefulness of coercive recycling.
In Simon's view, the key factor in natural and world economic growth is our capacity for the creation of new ideas and contributions to knowledge. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. In conjunction with the size of the educated population, the key constraint on human progress is the nature of the economic-political system: talented people need economic freedom and security to bring their talents to fruition.
Review
"The truly delightful aspect of the book is its persistent iconoclasm. Page after page, Simon punctures myths of scarcity and offers instead the counsels of optimism."--The American Spectator
Review
"Julian Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource excoriated prominent environmentalists for resorting to scare tactics and data-bending.... As Simon notes, the past sixteen years have been kind to many of his ideas.... Much as Simon had predicted, global per capita food production edged upward steadily while population rose and air quality improved in many places and ways."--Kathleen Courrier, The Washington Post
Review
"The Ultimate Resource is the most powerful challenge to be mounted against the principles of popular environmentalism in the last 15 years. . . . What is most startling is its deep-rooted optimism about the human condition. . . . [A] landmark book."--Washington Post Book World
Review
"With a full understanding of the opposition and smears he would encounter, Simon nevertheless wrote The Economics of Population Growth, Population Matters, and his best-known book, The Ultimate Resource. To him, the ultimate resource was human intelligence. We should also add, in honor of Simon, the courage to use that intelligence."--Thomas Sowell, Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"The most powerful challenge to be mounted against the principles of popular environmentalism in the last fifteen years."--The Washington Post Book World
Review
"Compelling and often brilliantly original. . . . [Simon's] economic analysis will leave a lot of readers heavily revising their thinking about the world around them."--Fortune
Review
"Julian Simon, an economics professor, systematically, shockingly, irresponsibly explodes each and every foundation of the whole environmental movement. And he does so with so many facts, graphs and examples that it would be a strange person who could walk away from reading this book without his or her faith in the assumptions of the environmental movement being just a little bit shaken up. . . . This is a magnificent book with the power to change minds."--Matt Ridley, The Sunday Telegraph
Review
The most powerful challenge to be mounted against the principles of popular environmentalism in the last fifteen years. Thomas Sowell - Chicago Sun-Times
Review
Julian Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource excoriated prominent environmentalists for resorting to scare tactics and data-bending.... As Simon notes, the past sixteen years have been kind to many of his ideas.... Much as Simon had predicted, global per capita food production edged upward steadily while population rose and air quality improved in many places and ways. Kathleen Courrier
Review
With a full understanding of the opposition and smears he would encounter, Simon nevertheless wrote The Economics of Population Growth, Population Matters, and his best-known book, The Ultimate Resource. To him, the ultimate resource was human intelligence. We should also add, in honor of Simon, the courage to use that intelligence. The Washington Post
Synopsis
Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon led a vigorous challenge to conventional beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution of the environment, the effects of immigration, and the "perils of overpopulation." The comprehensive data, careful quantitative research, and economic logic contained in the first edition of
The Ultimate Resource questioned widely held professional judgments about the threat of overpopulation, and Simon's celebrated bet with Paul Ehrlich about resource prices in the 1980s enhanced the public attention--both pro and con--that greeted this controversial book.
Now Princeton University Press presents a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Resource. The new volume is thoroughly updated and provides a concise theory for the observed trends: Population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunity and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortages occurred. The book also tackles timely issues such as the supposed rate of species extinction, the "vanishing farmland crisis," and the wastefulness of coercive recycling.
In Simon's view, the key factor in natural and world economic growth is our capacity for the creation of new ideas and contributions to knowledge. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. In conjunction with the size of the educated population, the key constraint on human progress is the nature of the economic-political system: talented people need economic freedom and security to bring their talents to fruition.
Table of Contents
| Analytical Contents | |
| List of Figures | |
| List of Tables | |
| Preface | |
| Acknowledgments for the First Edition | |
| Acknowledgments for the Second Edition | |
| Introduction. What Are the Real Population and Resource Problems? | 3 |
1 | The Amazing Theory of Raw-Material Scarcity | 23 |
2 | Why Are Material-Technical Resource Forecasts So Often Wrong? | 41 |
3 | Can the Supply of Natural Resources - Especially Energy - Really Be Infinite? Yes! | 54 |
4 | The Grand Theory | 73 |
5 | Famine 1995? or 2025? or 1975? | 84 |
6 | What Are the Limits on Food Production? | 97 |
7 | The Worldwide Food Situation Now: Shortage Crises, Glut Crises, and Government | 109 |
8 | Are We Losing Ground? | 127 |
9 | Two Bogeymen: "Urban Sprawl" and Soil Erosion | 139 |
10 | Water, Wood, Wetlands - and What Next? | 151 |
11 | When Will We Run Out of Oil? Never! | 162 |
12 | Today's Energy Issues | 182 |
13 | Nuclear Power: Tomorrow's Greatest Energy Opportunity | 203 |
14 | A Dying Planet? How the Media Have Scared the Public | 212 |
15 | The Peculiar Theory of Pollution | 223 |
16 | Whither the History of Pollution? | 233 |
17 | Pollution Today: Specific Trends and Issues | 241 |
18 | Bad Environmental and Resource Scares | 258 |
19 | Will Our Consumer Wastes Bury Us? | 275 |
20 | Should We Conserve Resources for Others' Sakes? What Kinds of Resources Need Conservation? | 283 |
21 | Coercive Recycling, Forced Conservation, and Free-Market Alternatives | 297 |
22 | Standing Room Only? The Demographic Facts | 311 |
23 | What Will Future Population Growth Be? | 326 |
24 | Do Humans Breed Like Flies? Or Like Norwegian Rats? | 342 |
25 | Population Growth and the Stock of Capital | 357 |
26 | Population's Effects on Technology and Productivity | 367 |
27 | Economies of Scope and Education | 391 |
28 | Population Growth, Natural Resources, and Future Generations | 399 |
29 | Population Growth and Land | 412 |
30 | Are People an Environmental Pollution? | 429 |
31 | Are Humans Causing Species Holocaust? | 439 |
32 | A Greater Population Does Not Damage Health, or Psychological and Social Well-Being | 459 |
33 | The Big Economic Picture: Population Growth and Living Standards in MDCs | 471 |
34 | The Big Picture II: LDCs | 491 |
35 | How the Comparisons People Make Affect Their Beliefs about Whether Things Are Getting Better or Worse | 513 |
36 | The Rhetoric of Population Control: Does the End Justify the Means? | 519 |
37 | The Reasoning behind the Rhetoric | 537 |
38 | Ultimately - What Are Your Values? | 547 |
39 | The Key Values | 557 |
| Conclusion. The Ultimate Resource | 578 |
| Epilogue. My Critics and I | 593 |
| Notes | 617 |
| References | 653 |
| Index | 691 |