Are humans devastating the planet? No.
- Peter Lorenzi
- Jan 3, 2023
- 2 min read
Paul Ehrlich is best known for being incredibly and repeatedly inaccurate with his environmental predictions, be it temperature, famine, population, you name it and he has been wrong repeatedly. The short video clip in this link is embarrassing at best, and along with his other, well-documented inaccuracies, should give cause to reject any claims he makes today. But that did not stop 60 Minutes and the also notoriously biased Scott Pellet from using Ehrlich to further embarrass the once credible show and to misinform the public -- where are the disinformation police when we need them most? -- as laid out well in the Freeman analysis, below.
And it gets worse. Michael Shellenberger should almost receive a yellow flag for "piling on" as he finishes off the sad state of CBS 'journalism' in his response to Ehrlich's absurd stance, Humans Are NOT Causing A "Sixth Mass Extinction"
On CBS “60 Minutes” last night, scientists claimed that humans are causing a “sixth mass extinction” and that we would need the equivalent of five planet earths for all humans to live at current Western levels.
“No, humanity is not sustainable to maintain our lifestyle — yours and mine,” claimed Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich. “Basically, for the entire planet, you'd need five more Earths. It’s not clear where they're gonna come from.”
Both claims are wrong and have been repeatedly debunked in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The assertion that “five more Earths” are needed to sustain humanity comes from something called the Ecological Footprint calculation. I debunked it 10 years ago with a group of other analysts and scientists, including the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, PLOS Biology.
We broke down the six measures that comprise the Ecological Footprint and found that five of the six, including food and forestry, were either in balance or surplus. The only thing out of balance was humankind's carbon emissions.
But reducing carbon emissions requires neither that rich nations become poor nor that poor nations remain poor. Rather, it simply requires that we move toward energy sources that produce fewer carbon emissions, namely natural gas and nuclear.
And, further piling on, her is the Wall Street Journal editorial. Let's call it "the apocalypse of an alarmist's mind."
Okay, from Victory Girls, one more blasting of the inane Ehrlich forecast and credibility.
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