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Re: The Limits To Growth



On Thu, 5 Dec 1996 15:16:18 -0800, "D. Braun"
<dbraun@u.washington.edu> wrote:

>> I have looked at it in the past, though probably not at everything.
>> As I have said before, I consider Hanson and many of the people he
>> quotes to be crackpots.
>
>Hmm. The illustrious, logical John McCarthy name-calling? 
>Can we call him a crackpot too for suggesting such remotely possible 
>things as an earth with 10s of billions of people living in a western
>lifestyle, or melting all the ice in antarctica in the name of progress a
>crackpot too? If I remember rightly, doing so in the past would merit a
>lifetime snub. Do we have to take Mccarthy seriously any more?

I don't know whether McCarthy has ever suggested that melting the
Antarctic ice-cap would be a good idea.  Certainly would be expensive
putting dikes and berms all around Bangladesh, southern New York
state, and other places close to sea level.
 
As a logical proposition, however, the possibility that McCarthy may
have said something silly in the past does not in any way encroach on
the question of whether Hanson is a crackpot.
 
My own feeling is more like this: I think Jay made a good living as a
freelance writer for some years out of running a schtick.  A few
facts, some of them from avant garde but respectable sources, plus a
lot of panic, retailed with his good command of grammar and typing,
and passable control of paragraphs, added up to a saleable product.
 
Now a reaction has set in: many people have looked at what went on
under the aegis of "environmentalism" over the last thirty years, and
found much of it lacking.  There was a certain haste on the part of
the US Congress to Be Good, and there was a great deal of absolutism
among the self-proclaimed leaders of environmentalism, and much of
this became visible.
 
Hanson, however, has not yet seen the curve in the road.  He's still
trying to sell the same old product, and he gets hysterical when
criticised by well informed and judicious environmentalists (like
myself, among others).
 
Perhaps in a few months we shall see a new Jay Hanson, one attuned to
the new realities of the market out there.  He has to make a living
after all.  At that point we shall have an eloquent journalistic voice
for cost benefit analysis, freer and more rational markets, payment
for takings, and so on.
 
He won't necessarily understand it all, but he'll run it off by the
ream as long as it pays.
 

-dlj.



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