Are Human Lives Improving?
Fifty years ago, Paul Ehrlich warned that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation and environmental ruin. Steven Pinker notes that today, people are living longer and extreme poverty has been decreasing. Is the glass half empty or half full?
Climate One · Climate One from The Commonwealth Club
November 15, 201850m 1s
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Show Notes
In their 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul and Anne Ehrlich warned of the dangers of overpopulation. These included mass starvation, societal upheaval and environmental ruin. This and other dire predictions about humankind earned Ehrlich a reputation as a prophet of doom, and fifty years later he doesn’t see much in the way of improvement. Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, on the other hand, prefers to look on the bright side: people are living longer, extreme poverty has been decreasing globally, worldwide literacy is on the rise. Is the glass half empty, or half full?
Guests:
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; author, “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Penguin, 2018)
Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University; co-author, “The Population Bomb” (Ballantine, 1968)
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