Speaker: Paul Sabin, Yale University [speaker's website]
In 1980, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, famous for his 1968 book The Population Bomb, made a notorious bet over mineral prices with University of Illinois economist Julian Simon. The wager served as a proxy for their competing visions of the future. Ehrlich argued that overpopulation would cause overconsumption, scarcity, and famine. Simon countered that flexible markets and new technologies would allow societies to adapt and improve human welfare. Sabin will interpret this confrontation in the context of the environmental battles of the 1970s. His examination of the relationship between modern environmentalism and broader political conflicts, including the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, contributes to an ongoing historical reassessment of the 1970s.