Five years ago, I described this very famous 1980 wager here . Wikipedia has a good, understated description of the wager. Ehrlich-Simon wager according to the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan V. Last , August 30, 2013, more less when I started analyzing this wager. The fact that Ehrlich "lost" according to the omnipotent neoliberal economists was used broadly as a vindication of the power of economics in predicting what would happen in the physical world. But were the economists mostly spouting nonsense, as is their long-standing tradition? Natural copper. Copper is one of the most important metals in the global economy that gravitates towards the "low carbon solutions" (whatever this term may mean to you). Source: Wikipedia. In short, Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper (Cu), ch...
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.