The infamous overpopulation bet: Simon vs. Ehrlich - Soraya Field Fiorio
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Discover an infamous bet between two professors, which sought to predict whether the earth would run out of resources due to a growing human population.
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In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon bet $1,000 on a question with stakes that couldn’t be higher: would the earth run out of resources to sustain a growing human population? They bet $200 on the price of five metals. If the price of a metal decreased or held steady over the next decade, Simon won. If the price increased, Ehrlich won. So, what happened? Soraya Field Fiorio investigates.
Lesson by Soraya Field Fiorio, directed by Avi Ofer.
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Science rivalries? Great Animation? A random topic I've never heard of?
Now THIS is a Ted Ed video
I had this topic briefly in my Master Resource Economics course like a year ago… it‘s funny to me to see a video from TEDed now :D
You seriously never heard of science rivalries? why do you think most educated people and "the wealthy" always have troubles with things that have been science approved and so forth. I personally find it difficult to believe when a science study throws results regardless if they are favorable or unfavorable because I know for a fact a different scientist or lab would come and "debunk" that previous study.... :\
Ted Ed had made science rivalry videos before! As far as I know, one was about two palaeontologists.
Random topic? Overpopulation is not a random topic
Economy is no science.
Thanos: OVERPOPULATION WILL LEAD TO STARVATION AND DESTRUCTION!
Science: Nah you're just nuts and want an excuse to kill a load of people mate.
No one said to kill anybody! We should all be raising less children!
@@DriftRacing77 That's already happening, all developed and even developing countries such as Latin American countries are having fewer children, except for almost all Africa and some Asian countries.
@@DriftRacing77 Or what if we taught people to be good parents...
Egypt and Ethiopia are almost at war over water supplies.
@@sr.patata8817 They'll get there too, it's just because most of those countries are currently developing countries which usually experience a population boom that then levels out as their citizens become more financially successful and educated
I was disappointed at the “yeah, but…” tone of this video. Julian Simon convincingly won, it wasn’t even close, and even much broader indices of human welfare have all continued to rapidly improve in the absence of political interference. Global poverty rates have plummeted in the years since, access to clean drinking water increased, child mortality has dropped, the price of technological goods has cratered. Making sure that everyone has access to this ever expanding pie while dealing with the impacts of scale (billions needing more electricity is worse with coal than with renewables) are the big challenges and are primarily political in nature, not inherent to either population size, technologies or market economics.
I don't see the problem, there are still many problem despite many of our successes.
The way I see it (not that I disagree with you), is that even if the levels of poverty drops doesn't necessarily mean that global warming is going to drop as well. The case is that yes, he won the bet but the point was more complicated than that.
@@juanpedro7303 At the same time, who is to say climate change is even a bad thing? According to the maps I have seen, my area will actually get greener. I live in a desert. Twice as many people each year die to cold than heat. Of course its not all good, but is it worth it. If people wanted to stop climate change anyway, there are easy ways such as nuclear.
@@mobilegamesonly3170 I think that's a good reasoning but if a desert changes his ecosystem, many of the living things that were specifically adapted to that specific environment will suffer. Of course, extinction is something normal in nature, but not as quickly and steady like the period were we live in.
@@juanpedro7303 Of course, but I value human life over animal life. Animals do affect humans, but it is hard to say positive or negative. And when these animals die, new ones will move in.
The undercurrent of this video's premise is obviously incorrect. While I would agree that the way the earths' population lives, consumes energy, and excretes both carbon and methane, is a bigger factor than simple population, that does not mean that it's all that matters.
Endless economic and population growth is mathematically and obviously doomed to end with destroying earth as a habitat for humanity. We all need to dial down our lifestyles and decrease the number of people too.
Betting on metal price to bet for overpopulation and it wasn't very accurate
Our experts are marvellous
Tbf it was just a small bet, not like an actual experiment
Overpopulation might not be the only reason for poverty. But we need to remember that we have limited resources and energy supply. I live in India, and a lot of our problems can be tracked to population
In an apocalypse, not sure if a gold necklace would have much use
😔
… until you really need a catalyst.
actually, gold would be one of the few things you could trade for goods or services. I wouldn't toss your gold necklace out yet.
September 2021:
Price increases for raw metals is off the charts, exceptions for gold and silver.
Temperatures have reached 50C in Canada this year(!) and forrest fires in California this year were the worst on recors, as is the drought. Australia, North America and Europe seem to take turns documenting the most extreme forrest fire season on record, only to be broken again the following year.
Siberia just had the worst forest fire season ever recorded. An area the size of India was on fire! Perma frost has started to melt, and this will accellerate the climate warming all on its own even if we stop ALL release of greenhouse gasses now. This has reached a point of no return and will keep going no matter what we do about it. NOTE: these facts are NOT based climate models but on actual measurements.
All of Asia is set to run out of fish as a food source by 2050. Just about all animals and plants have been farmed for a long, long time, and fish is next.
Africas population is set to double by the year 2050.
Coral reefs are dead. Dead. Immagine all trees and flowers being dead too! That is what the oceans look like right now. Nobody seems to care.
Bees are dying at a record pace in California and there is no honey this year, but guess what? If they all die, there will be no FRUIT! Think about that for second.
The largest animal on earth by the year 2100 is predicted to be dairy cows.
I am 55 years old, and I am worried about MY future. I was preaching sustainability all my life, but I no longer do. It is too late. I was cycling and living car free, eating vegan for years, but I just bought a new car. Nobody seems to care about this anyways. Best of luck. Jan H. Maaso
"...I am 55 years old, and I am worried about MY future...". No need to worry, nature will repair all damage done. It will take her no more than some thousands of years, not even one million years.
Just live happily under a rock. I did that after years of worrying about the planet but now I just accept the world and humanity as it is. It's nice under my rock. Very comforting.
How pitiful
Nothing you did or could do is going to change the planet. Do you morons not realize how big the earth is compared to us & how small the earth is compared to the sun. The earths climate is always changing nothing you can do to stop it
When you're talking about long term existence on the scale of centuries or millenia, humanity would be much better off with an upper limit of 3 to 3.5 billion people than where we are now
In other words, we would have been better off if the Haber-Bosch process had never been developed and we were still fighting wars over guano.
It will drop in about 500 years, I think.
I think you are valuing "Humanity" over humans.
@@micahbush5397 What are you talking about? Andrew was talking about population count, not civilization level. He didn't say it would have been better to freeze growth when there were 3.5 billion people; you can have 3.5 billion people now, with today's technology. ¬_¬
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z He said an upper limit of 3 to 3.5 billion people, which is also the upper limit of how many people could be fed without synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
I wonder if I was Simon... I too have optimistic view but when it comes to climate change I contradict myself, but my brother and a friend says humans will find a way out of-to survive.
Still, it's depend on who will live and who will die...?
i feel you man
i hope we will make it to like 2070
I expect mankind will survive climate change. The real question is "what kind of world will we survive in" though.
@@2bfrank657 A extremely divided one
@@2bfrank657 yeah the luxury most of us have will probably be lost and regained by 2200
@Wary of Extremes yeah that is like the last thing our infrastructure needs
The disparity is wealth distribution has gotten even more absurd than it was back when those two were feuding.
The amount of salt required to not write that man a letter lol
India is one of the countries who had the fastest population growth in last few decades and prices of goods also rosed during this period but it was in relation with inflation that the country increase to tackle the growing population . well I am sure the rate would decrease asthe youngest generation has not interest having many childrens
India is still an exploited country
@@KonniWynn yeah India is fully using there resources but fertility rate us dropping fast in southern states of india
@@KonniWynn Brazil, Argentina and India, all 3 have one thing in common, currupt politicians.
India "solved" their problem just like China did, by abusing student and work visas as loopholes to send millions of people to other countries to stay forever and then sponsor their families to go over too.
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z I disagree countries invites young amazing minds to their country also It's easy to satisfy Indians easily too
Simon was too focused on unknown variables, while Ehlrich didn’t account for them at all.
I say it is better to be safe than sorry and to try to decrease the consumeristic culture while looking for new alternatives.
Exactly. The conclusion of this video seem to give two-forked ways, Like this or that. Why can’t we decrease the consumer hungry footfall Along with controlling the exploitation by bad alternatives.
This is once again a reminder that TED is not unbiased and definitely has taken a side in these issues, mostly the side of technocapitalism.
You would cause unemployment and raising poverty levels. The main problem of people giving solutions is that they usually don´t count for every single aspect that their solutions have
impact into.
@@jcas That is nearly the only problem.
@@beactivebehappy9894 I think "consumer hungry footfall" falls into the category of "unsustainable practices", which they mentioned at the end. Of course it's pretty open to interpretation.
My new hobby Is to watch your videos, translate them in word to my language, write all new English words and their translation in handbook, memorize video animation From beggining to end and then play it in my head when i read translation i made
Its really fun and im learning so much and also improving my English ( hopefully )!
Don't tell me ur working on creating ur own language
So infinite growth is possible on a finite planet after all.
love the new narrator+ the animation style
Wiki says that those metals were chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Would be nice to mention that in the video (and those animated bars kinda look like gold or silver).
I seem to remember that there was a study from the U.N. which showed that, given current trends, the world's population will stabilize at around 10 billion. That's a small enough population for us to feed with our current agricultural technology, if applied properly, let alone what we'll come up with in the next few decades. We're also getting better and better at inventing and applying renewable technologies that'll enable us to sustain a high standard of living for those 10 billion, and the global rates of poverty are steadily declining. At our current trends, by the end of the next century, global hunger will be effectively eradicated, and we'll have stabilized at a population that the world's resources can provide for, at a comfortable standard of living for everyone.
This is such a rosy view of the future that I don't expect it to happen. Humans will always find ways to screw it up for ourselves. Personally, I expect totalitarian states that destroy prosperity in the name of popularity.
Yess...
Avi is back!
I just love Ted videos
Who else loved the little lady with the face mask at the end?
Am I dim? How does a $1,000 bet get paid off by a check for $576.07?
Plot twist :
The magazine wanted to become popular so they hired this story.
Wait, when metal price decreased? Prices can only go up!
I love Reagan’s laugh
There are nore humans than ever amd still live better than ever. It is not so simple.
Nice video 👌
The Way you illustrate your videos make a huge impact on what the watcher feels. Each video has a different type of illustration and getting information in us! Beautiful videos!
It's called tone
@@nineveh17 You sound like your fun at parties
@@justfactual i guess he’s justfactual …
Consider the fact that comments with lighter profile image has more likes due to more attention caught.
@@justfactual what's wrong with his comment? It's helpful to identify it
Animation looks like something out of a Roald Dahl book, love it!🤩
Redbull ads 😂
Omg ikr
Blake edwards vibe
@Not RickRoll 👇 it wasn't thank you I'm so relaxed
Boy : Tales of Childhood
Going Solo
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
Matilda
The BFG
....
The most unbelievable thing was that the person who lost the bet paid the amount 😂
Thank you for not spoiling the video :D
Yeah you are right. I have won 4 out of 5 bets throughout my life but I have still lost more than I have gained because people don't pay but I do, so don't bet
only scientists would, they get even witnesses for it. never seen anyone else to be so upfront about it
@@bobthegoat7090 lesson : betting doesn't pay everytime
@@cubeyu5596 It's not a movie. Watch the video before checking comments.
That's literally the problem of Brazil. We're an extremely rich country with the greatest water supply, both pluvial and mineral, and one of the biggest agriculture market, but with corrupt politicians diverting funds, we can't give everyone an equal chance of making money. This year, the unemployement and famine rates are skyrocketing.
Have you tried sending some of those motorcycle assassins that plague brazil at them?
@@ThePickledsoul great Idea, but killing them now would make them heroes. There is a great portion that still supports them as if everything was okay.
Ha, ha, I heard same thing in Russia. And in Ukraine. Apparently in every poor country populists love to tell that this country is "extremely rich, but corrupt politicians...", while obviously it is just a matter of lazy population. Just get a job.
@@Crazmuss If you read a little bit, you would know that Brazil is the top 3 country with highest tax rate, and yet our public systems are mostly inefficient. This can only mean corruption. And is already proved when politicians take money to other countries, ones we call "fiscal paradises".
@@eduardobarros6562 yea yea, just earn more, you peasant! My grandma used to not have salary at all in USSR and it was greatest country on Earth!
The animation makes the video more interesting really love the work you do TED. 🥰
I invest in both stock and crypto.
Yeah stocks are good crypto is nice too
I once thought about this crypto investment but it seemed too complicated for me and it's not steady in price
That's the crypto world for you but this really isn't a problem you just have to trade with an expert broker one like Lucas Walter.
I heard about his works few months back from my colleagues.
I can never stress enough how amazing the work of TED-Ed animators is! It's so sad that they don't get all the well-deserved recognition😕 This episode's is one of my favorites!
Is 14.7 M subscribers less....???
But I hope 4 more
Lots of love 💖 nd blessings
They hire various animating companies so that the style remains diverse.
@@ForteExpresso hire*
They have nearly 15M subscribers, how is that not getting recognition?
Table the hyperbole.
The little girl with the sign says: "School strike for the climate."
its in sweedish, a referance to Greta Thunberg.
I thought it was german, cool reference
It was a nice surprise, speaking as a Swede
I guessed from the braids and the Germanic-looking language (I can't tell them apart) that it was Greta Thunberg. Thanks for the translation!
someone came before me-
You mean that bratty little girl who knows nothing, but yet the whole world thinks she's a genius?
1:35 he was kind of right. Cultured meat, precision fermentation, plasma technology, vertical farming etc can not only boost yield but also improve quality.
yes, the thing is, we still lack resources, even if we are not alive to see it happening, the future generations will not find ways to support an increasing population. Paul Ehrlich was right but just a litte bit shortsighted on the "colapse year"
@@rafamilk1 lets make a bet
@@rafamilk1 You population bomb enthusiasts have been BTFOed so often that you are borderline flat earthers. Paul Ehrlich was wrong and his philosophy has caused more suffering and resource shortages then any population growth.
@@rafamilk1 I also want to bet with you.
These are things due to technological advancements, not increased population growth. Technology advances with time, and so does population, but correlation does not imply causation. Increased population increases demand, technology increases supply. So long as technology advancements can keep up, then prices don't rise, but in markets where technology has peaked or stagnated, we have seen increased prices.
We actually already produce enough food for everyone on earth, and even for a population of 11 billion which is supposed to be our peak.
It is just not profitable enough to feed everyone.
Underrated comment. We shouldn't be fearing population growth and global doom if our first priority is profit.
Not to mention lots of technologies that could be alternatives or better farming techniques. Arcology basically.
I would like to clear up a misconception that some may have about this statement. It is true, I would imagine. But, not doing something because it isn't profitable is not the result of greed, but of necessity. No company is Scrooge McDuck, swimming in a pool of infinite money. If you do something unprofitable, no matter how noble, your company will quickly dissapear, and with no company or money you can't keep doing that noble thing anymore! Finding a way to do something profitable doesn't imply greed, it is in fact synonymous with doing it sustainably.
@@Jakedasnake1066 a company would not lose money by giving unused food to people that cant afford thier food anyway.
@@Jakedasnake1066 that’s why we need governments or UN to do it not companies. Of course communism is not the answer
The background music sets the tone perfectly for each section💜
I like how Ehrlich adjusted for inflation in Simon's way
I find it remarkable that Victorian-level mathematics from Thomas Malthus is still widely accepted and proposed by non-economists in the 21st century. Maybe because it's simple to understand. Whereas something like Econometrics requires more than mere high school-level math.
I think is because Malthusianism is very convenient on politics
The math isn't wrong. That was the way the world and society worked throughout all of human history, and was written in 1798 on the brink of the industrial revolution. While the industrial revolution, which didn't really start to take off until 1820-1840.
Until that point, there was a glass ceiling of production any individual or group of individuals could achieve. Mechanization changed *everything.*
Paul Gaither the math WASN'T wrong, but the equation changed.
@@wanderingthewastes6159 - You are arguing semantics. The math still very much applies all over the world in underdeveloped nations. Apart from government policies and countless others factors, the concepts remain valid. Just because one lives in a bubble of safety and security doesn't mean it applies to the entire globe.
Paul Gaither did I ever say that these concepts were invalid? All I said is that there are way more variables in this equation than Malthus initially considered. Sure, x, y and z matter, but there are also a, b and c. Moreover, high population is almost a prerequisite for undeveloped nations to experience economic growth, since this makes multinational investors and corporations have a large incentive to invest in the country's big domestic market. Also let's not forget that pre covid poverty rates had been on the decline for decades, with extreme poverty being cut in half in the last 30 years. It is very safe to say that ever increasing population pools have not shown to impede welfare growth.
Ronald Reagan laughing hysterically at the idea of a wildfire is the most Ronald Reagan thing I've ever scene
Regain couldn't tie his own shoes. He'd kept working on it if Nacy hadn't exsplained to him he had on loafers!
The most harmful of US presidents.
*seen
Reagan deregulating the phones is the reason you were able view the video of him laughing. It created the cell phone market, massive battery tech jumps, hybrid cars, Tesla, and the solar boom. Like him or not he should be viewed as the greatest Environmental President of all time - by a mile.
@@probert2436 wow... what a MASSIVE leap of imagination you have there friend...
I learned about this wager in my environmental economics course in college. Thanks for making a video so it's easier for me to explain this to people
The price of metals seems like a good choice to me. The bet had nothing to do with how charitable rich nations would be in the future, just their ability to efficiently utilize scarce resources.
Seems pretty obvious that the narrator knows about Economics just as Ehrlich did. Of course, it is a good choice. You cannot study tons of variables for ten years just for a bet.
Charitable!! Looks like you live inside a well called america. It has absolutely nothing to do with charity and everything to do with buisness my dear 3 year old child.
@@BlackSakura33 well whatever the reason for the wealth disparities, demand for metals from poorer countries contribute to their prices too. So really the bet was about the world's ability to efficiently utilize scarce resources.
Not really. The price of metals is a lot less affected by population growth, than it is access, new technologies, international agreements and of course demand, which is not really moved by population growth, as the growth is mainly happening i poor communities. The poor countries might also have an increased demand, but not a demand corresponding with the growth, had it been in ex. the US or Europe. That means, for Ehrlich to be right, we have to keep people in poverty forever.
@@peterb_nonumbers China? Taiwan? Korea? Japan? India? Demand is strong and so is population growth in developed countries
Thanos, if you're watching this, you should have done your research, man.
yeah, he could just snap to double resources, or even better...according to this video...distribute the resource equitably
Thanos should have taken a basic biology course before settling on the brilliant plan to reduce the world population to what it was in the early 1970s. You know, from where it doubled on its own over the next 40 years.
It's not a problem if the plan is to kill half of the intelligent species but he really drop the ball when he kill half of every species in existence. That just halved the resources!
Video was good until about 4 minutes then turned into straight propaganda. Poor effort
Agreed; it suddenly started endorsing an excessive and untenable human population as if resource-shortage is the only problem that human overpopulation causes. 🙄 🤦 ¬_¬
Always prioritize the environment. The economy does no good if one can't eat.
The bet was idiotic on many levels, not least of which was the choice of metals as signifier of scarcity and also the time frame upon which the bet would be settled.
The video is also idiotic because it can be demonstrated that coronavirus can enjoy unlimited population growth in a human utterly oblivious to the consequences of that growth because coronavirus does not recognize the existence of a human nor does it acknowledge the consequences of death.
As to the subject of the causes of starvation it is quite true that in the modern era there is such an overabundance of food as to render the population question irrelevant. That such growth has occurred at the cost of killing the Earth is easily dismissed by the consumer (routinely dismissed in my own experience).
But if anyone happens to notice droughts depriving agriculture of water, floods destroying crops and hurricanes destroying infrastructure it is quite obvious that overabundance is a temporary thing whereas the human population growth isn't stopping.
What this means is that Malthus will win the argument, civilization will collapse and humankind will go extinct. But we do have cellphones so NBD!
Imagine being proven wrong for 300 years an thinking you will be right in the end
Next ted's video: How cannibalism can be a solution to overcome the overpopulation problem
Hannibal Lector is vibrating in his grave right now
Call me Johnathan Swift cause we putting baby back on the menu
Nah just inequality is the "humane" way to do it. Sad but true, but infant morality numbers have improved.
@@louvendran7273 Kinda agree with this. Survival of the fittest. You can't live in a utopia where everyone is equal because that would encourage overpopulation more. Everyone gets healthcare, jobs, and food = people live longer and produce more healthy offspring.
Simply it’s called “Overton window”.
The fact that 40% of US food goes to waste every year. And there are 300 million people living in the US, which means that the US waste food that could be used to feed 240 million people each year, and that number is only growing. This says a lot about our understanding of overpopulation, not to mention the fact that 90% of farmland is used to feed animals which their meat only makes up for 10% of our diet. The limit of population is not close from being reached in my opinion. And if you say that we may ran out of trees to produce oxygens, well algae makes up 40% of all oxygen production on Earth, and Algae can be grown easily.
It really is a distribution problem; There are enough resources for everyone, and then some. The people who control those resources, do so for profit. We have 108 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the US alone, because those who "own" the food source, delivery, and distribution, feel they can't make a profit from it.
Food is not the problem
Most of the food that goes to waste is grains which are easy to farm. Just because some type of food goes to waste doesn't mean there is no overpopulation
Don't worry, the US is losing around 40% of our food sources due to drought in the west.
@@sachinsurya007 food is food. Calories are calories.
Anyway we have a clear tendency to stop growing, people don't want to have children anymore or just one at much.
Bah experts. Ofcourse limiting population will solve all our problems. We can end global warming right now if population is reduced like 10 fold.
@Carson Lawler third option is do nothing and people kill each other in wars over climate change
Sorry, but as long as the monetary system exists it’s “infinite growth” model will eat through this planet.
Millions do die from starvation - just not in the west
TED’s vision can’t see any further than Silicon Valley
Just in the communist paradises of Angola, Cuba, Venezuela, etc
Love the Beatles reference with the submarine
The video presents the facts fairly well but is clearly biased. It dismisses the bet as not accurately representing the topic--because they chose metals rather than say food--without discussing why the two agreed on metals (hint: because metals prices aren't really affected by politics the way food prices are). And then at the end the video admits that in every measurable way life is actually better today, so Simon was right and Malthus / Ehrlich were both wrong. Problems today are caused by politics, not by dwindling natural resources.
Throughout this time metal prices may have dropped, but could that not nearly mean what they thought? In addition to trade sanctions, processing, and markup, our ability to and resources for extracting metals has increased significantly. In this case, the prices may not have rose because we're taking from what would be the future supply.
Absolutely. Not to mention that the ability to extract finite resources at a greater rate is exactly inverse to the concept of long-term sustainability. Borrowing from the future makes a population collapse all that much more likely.
@@kmatlockii Why do you think that metals are a finite resource? They do not evaporate into nothingness after all. So it is just a question of how much effort you need to reuse the metal (which is already done for many metals, especially copper, silver and gold).
that's not how resources work.
I think (assumption) recycling rate is still very low. People pushing for "circular economy" has not been successful anywhere yet.
@@user-qi3rm2wr5m It is not that low. There are metals where recycling rate is near or even over 50 percent, especially copper, silver, gold, platinum and the like.
and here we are today with dwindiling rare metal supplies and scarece resources such as lithium
The issue with the population bomb is that it ignores population stagnation. That as a population becomes wealthy enough the children born to it decreases and even stabilizes. It is currently theorized that the global population will reach an equilibrium at around 11-13 billion people, meaning that within our lifetimes we will most likely see the end of population growth. Similar to solution solubility equations, rates will balance out.
Those estimates are BS by narrow-minded, short-sighted, well-off lissencephalitic people. They obviously don't realize that food isn't the only resource there's a shortage of EVEN NOW (eg jobs, land, teachers, doctors, transportation, etc.), let alone that resource-shortage isn't the only problem caused by human overpopulation; it causes many problems that cannot be solved with more resource or better distribution. Even 5B is too much.
There's no way we can provide a European lifestyle to 8 billion, let alone more than 10 billion people. Think of everything you use in a week and multiply that by 10 billion: cell phones, TVs and computers, disposable plastic wrappers and utensils, A/C, car with gasoline, etc. To meet the demand would destroy the environment.
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z thank you for that. You've described perfectly what I'm at pains to explain. It is not simply a matter of having enough to feed 7, 9, 11 or 20 billion mouths, but all else. Saying "we have enough to feed everyone!" is just a cop-out. And let's not forget the Ponzi-style pension schemes set up after the two World Wars, which require a large working population to be sustained.
@@sandal_thong8631 i love it when people think that rest %80 of world lives in north american/european life sytle
@@ilovespongebob7840 What's the meaning of that statement? I can't tell which part is the sarcastic emphasis on.
Wish I was alive in the 80s, I would've gotten in on that bet.
you can get in now, just open an account on a broker and go to the futures market.
Erlich is Still around with Same ideas that were proven to be wrong. You can bet him today, he has not learned anything.
Kind of prejudicial to imply nuclear energy as an “unsustainable” source of energy with an implication of pollution via the steam stack. All energy even the “green” energy of solar and wind produce vast amounts of waste. If anything nuclear energies efficiency is what makes it a better option than others
What wastes do solar and wind power produce?
Hey, I don’t think that’s a nuclear power plant. Then again, I’m not exactly sure, do nuclear power plants even produce such gases? Seems more like a fossil fuel plant
Large fossil fuel plants also have steam stacks 🤦♂️
Time stamped 4:17 that is the classical depiction of a nuclear power plants cooling tower in the upper left corner. Next to it is I would deduce is some kind of fossil fuel power plant.
As for waste produced by “green” energy sources those would be the material mined to construct the devices and the devices themselves when they cease to be productive.
@@owencrowley6769 Do you even hear yourself? The material mined to construct the devices wouldn't be "waste" as they would be the material used to construct the devices.
Also, you can hardly call the waste from the devices becoming obsolete "vast" if you compare it to nuclear which is producing waste the whole time it's operational. And not just waste that takes up space, but dangerous, radioactive waste.
Also, if solar and wind turbines are constantly becoming obsolete, that would be a sign of rapid improvement in efficiency in those industries as a whole, which would be a good thing, obviously.
This is a naïve view. It took man ~200,000 years to grow from ~2 to 2.5 billion, and now it has only taken us 65 years to triple that population to 7.5 billion. Nothing in our 200,000 years of experience prepares us for this, and we are handling it very, very poorly. We are innovative, but there are many critical issues that are quickly reaching their tipping point.
Check out Enrico Fermi's Great Filter.
It's really not a question of whether we can sustain a higher population. It's more about whether we SHOULD keep increasing our numbers.
That has already been answered the new generations are having less children. It's more a question of how seriously we should take climate change. Climate change will doom us no matter how how high the population is.
???? wtf
This guy ethics. Everyone else is just thinking with their genitals
The Malthusian Bargain hasn't mattered since the Haber-Bosch Process was discovered and implemented on an industrial scale. The only limit to human population growth is access to potable water and the amount of food density per unit of arable land.
I disagree, thats what it use to be. Now it is more of the transportation of those resources.
Party true, as it is much more complexe than that as spécies that make the earth fertile (worms for example) are killed by pesticides
Going by how much water we have on Earth and assuming it was absolutely required that we turned all of it into drinking water we would have the capacity for 360,000,000,000,000,000,000 people and due to already pre-existing water filtration systems you wouldn't need more fresh water because it would just be filtered back round, however that is in the extreme case and even the most Zealous Malthusian doesn't think we'd ever reach that number of people on Planet Earth.
/ The only limit to human population growth is access to potable water//
How about desalination?
We're rapidly destroying and destabilizing our ecosystems. Should we push them over the brink and into full-blown collapse, you will find out what the real limits to growth on a finite planet are.
Ehrlich :- England wouldn't exist in 2000
England in 2021 :- I shifted to a parallel universe, due to over population.
Ehrlich wasn't totally wrong . If you look up the population of England in the early 2000 and now it has almost doubled. Next time you go to the supermarket see how many produce is imported from other countries. How is the NHS going to support all these new people. Traffic has gotten worse and the metro is more packed then ever. Having more people around causes all kinds of tension in society.
@@wduprevil This right here. When people talk about managing overpopulation, it feels like they only ever look at it in terms of food production. And some governments baffingly want people to have more children, purely for the sake of the economy, never mind about finance and lack of availability of jobs. (Unemployment exists yet many people are unable to get jobs for various reasons. This hardly benefits the economy.) Little about severe over-crowding, energy usage, housing, waste produced, etc is ever said (and the costs of that is significant). And we can't keep taking over more land because then we're just depriving animals of their habitats, leading to even more extinction.
We can cut back all we want but the fact remains we have added several billion more people than the last century and you can only cut down so much. We need to start naturally reducing our overpopulation.
@@1Thunderfire yes overpopulation is multi layered problem but food the big problem. I saw a documentary recently that explained that the land mass of many countries is not enough to sustain their current population if exports were to be cut off. Think of if, produce like bananas, oranges, avocados and many more which don't grow in Europe would no longer be on the shelves. That's only possible because of fossil fuel. These products are flown or shipped from far away countries. Guess what when things get tough most countries will keep their food to feed their own people they won't sell it to other nations.
we have to willingly reduce family size and for some to not have any kids at all.
3:53 woah, the video went from reporting facts in a mostly balanced way, to emphasizing leftist values...
"The metals' prices decreased" *copper has joined the chat*
if food ran out... why not eat cake?
yes!
Although, overpopulation does play a big role in our world! It's always one of the reasons or causes of the destruction of our world.
Please, do not overpopulate our world. We should all raise less children (and not kill people, as someone said).
I will have 1 child max.
for example there was a field of grass farm in the 12th century,then that farm family kept populating over the generations and they had to keep building houses on that field. They had no where else to grow much of a garden anymore. They had but to crowd in the cities.The cities became crowded too.Rents and demands for housing costs went up because of demand. San francisco is one example.
A key thing here, was that a substitute for the the usage of those metals was something we even *could* invent.
We can talk about what might happen if human ingenuity accomplishes a given task, but we should not assume that it is possible for us to do so, or that it will happen even if it is possible.
If there's one thing I'm willing to bet on, its humanity's drive for self preservation.
Darwin Award winners notwithstanding, the last 12,000 years of human history has seen humans devise ever-increasingly ingeneous solutions to the problems it has created for itself.
Betting against humanity's ability to dig itself out of problems is betting against the same species that spent less than a decade going from "no such thing as rocket science" to "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Its betting against the same species that went from the 120ft-long first flight of the Wright Brothers to the first jet airplane in less than a generation.
Humanity has found a way to survive the harshest climates in nature, from flash-freezing lows to molten-rock highs, from pure vacuum to miles under the ocean.
We survived the industrial revolution's impact on food production requirements when Malthus first made his doomsaying claims, we managed to bitterly hate each other without annihilating ourselves for sixty years, and, bad as everything we're going through is right now, we also managed to churn out an effective, low risk vaccine to a deadly disease using tested but as yet unproven methods in less than a year.
We're doing okay. We're humans: hard to get off our asses, but properly motivated, capable of doing things so unimaginably miraculous that generations that follow literally can't believe it happened.
@TED-Ed could you make a video on why you should read “The Count of Monte Cristo” or “A Tale of Two Cities”?
"The Three Musketeers" is my all-time favorite, "Count of Monte Cristo" is great too. On the other hand I could never develop much of an interest in "A Tale of Two Cities".
Malthus was disproved long before Ehrlich.
We are not yet at the breaking point, so don’t think for a second this problem is solved. Famine can very well happen in the next decades in massive scale.
I suspect that the lack of water will be the cause of critical food shortages in the future.
Because of over population? No. Because of global warming, yes
I believe this is more or less correct. A glance at other species reveals what happens following a period of unsustainable population growth. There is a die-off. While humans may have the tools to ensure that humans are 'less' impacted by this - and that a portion of humanity will be more 'shielded' from the consequences (which the cynic in me observes will drive a convenient source of cheap labour for corporations who's shielded shareholders are all about the bottom-line) - the hubris of those who are content to play the game will one day realize that their bridge of prosperity built upon the spines of those they have shove beneath them has grown so narrow that the balancing act grows in itself laborious - the world beyond their shrinking havens an abyss of their own creation.
The world is but a pebble floating in space. Our existence is far from assured regardless of what we do - but we entirely do not require external factors as climate change to drive our impoverishment and demise.
@@pedropradacarciofi2517 Do we have rational reason to think it will 'not' happen? Human population has increased by at least 250% in the past 50 years alone - which is but a blink of an eye in the context of human history alone, let alone that of the planet.
When a person decides to hold their breath for the rest of time - that exercise might go well - for the first 30 seconds or so. Then reality begins to catch up fast and the person's lungs protest - and should that decision taken be outside of that person's hands to revert then in a matter of minutes lasting damage would manifest - and some time later, life leaves the body.
Should a person go on a hunger strike, a comparable process plays out but slower.
Should a species choose to over-draw from their pool of acquirable resources (in any of a number of ways - including population growth) then they will eventually come to a point where their choices come back to haunt them.
In the absence of hard data, and deep understanding to know the contrary to be true - it is at best a gamble to bet on overpopulation and sustainability not being worthy of consideration or action.
Many thanks James and Jason for sharing your informed points of view! Very refreshing in this sea of misinformation and empty barrels.
I always had interest on this topic, i think when it comes to population, quality is far more important than quantity from now on.
Never understood why a married couple would want so many children in this century.
Elderly people rely on their son(s) and his(their) wife(wives) to take care of them, so need lots of sons. One solution is Social Security to protect seniors, which doesn't exist in the economic south.
@@sandal_thong8631 That's the real problem. We need to learn when to leave this planet and not just wait for death while our children and grand^n-children or the society carries the burden of sustaining a dying person who isn't enjoying a life with quality. "Living" a life while pooping your pants and having dementia is death on life.
@@gusstavv That sounds good, but there just aren't enough people that fit that description to have an impact, and not too many 70-year-olds are having children! I looked it up: since 1950, deaths have ranged from just below 50 million/year to 60 million/year while births have ranged from 100 million/year to 140 million/year. We've got to hit the other end, banning teenagers from having children and incentivizing women not to have them until 30. My grandfather used to believe in zero-population growth, but when that didn't happen 1950-1980, he then believed in negative population growth. Getting births down to below 50 million/year still seems far-fetched.
@@sandal_thong8631 Seems a bit selfish, having children with the expectation that they must care for you later in life. And why sons anyway?
@@1Thunderfire In the developing world the daughter leaves home to live with her husband and take care of his parents.
Just because we haven’t converted every last square inch of Earths surface to residential, commercial, and industrial uses doesn’t mean we aren’t overpopulated
We arent, theres enough resources to go around. Except we care more about profit than overpopulation. Exponentially, population is growing less due to people having less children.
@@carlogaytan7010 No, there most certainly is _not_ enough resources to "go around". There ALREADY isn't enough jobs, land, doctors, teachers, transportation, etc. to go around. And that's just resources. Overpopulation causes many problems that have nothing to do with resources and can't be solved by just throwing more at it. ¬_¬
It's a given that overpopulation leads to environmental degradation. If it's a choice of cutting down a forest or feeding your family, there is no real choice there. Factory jobs which allow you to pay the rent and buy food, but which also might pollute nearby rivers. There was a jab at China's One-Child Policy (1978-2016) in this video, but it was only by reining in China's massive population growth that they have been able to lift their entire population out of absolute poverty (as defined by the U.N.), and begun the long process of cleaning up their environment. If you look at the other countries with massive populations, India and Bangladesh, their environmental conditions are shocking and getting worse all the time. India, which is covered in surface water in the form of lakes and rivers, is running out of drinking water because they've heavily polluted it all. They're trying to fix it, granted, but it clearly shows that overpopulation leads to environmental degradation.
Of course, logically, BOTH ideas MUST be implemented. Unlimited growth, by definition, is cancer.
Crickets, by the peanut gallery......
4:01 Greta thunberg!!!‽ Woah! Roald Dahl-ish animation!
The China's new 3 child policy shown in the animation was a quite a reference!
Except China knows what they're doing. This TED Ed video made me unsubscribe to them. The quality of their research does not live up to the quality of their animations.
I bet T'Challa made a similar presentation to Thanos in 'What If' imagine this video is voiced by Boseman.
I guess he met him before he went on his killing spree of halving populations.
Totally like Britain disappeared in 2000
Funny that London's underwater in this video 2:04, to try to mock a point, and this was posted a couple days before NYC was flooded!
*laughs in water*
Experts from the GIEC advocate for reducing population (not just limiting the growth).
Do you have a source for that because as far as I'm aware they never agreed on anything like that
Maybe the Overpopulation cant impact our lives right now! But if the growth double every decade without any sign of decling! Sure we will run out of resources! Unless We use our Present Resources to Colonize the Space which resources are abundant!
This is whats happens when you don't include a genuine scientist in the debate..
Not really. Their basic premise was spot on. They just needed to use a larger and more diverse basket of commodities. But the economics behind the bet is solid and you can't refute that with science. If the earth has limited output and the population grows the prices will go up. Supply will exceed demand which cause prices to up. If Simon is right and human ingenuity can increase the carrying capacity of the earth than it is possible to increase supply to match or exceed demand which will cause the priced to go down. No science will refute that reality. It is the innovation fact that the Malthusians get wrong every time and why they have been wrong since Malthus.
Simon must be ready to eat Soylant Green then.
Not for a while; people are still wasting the finite and limited land there is on dead people, sticking them in a box to prevent them from returning to the Earth for as long as possible because of BS primitive superstitious religious reasons. 🤦 😒 ¬_¬
2:32 - just to add a few details you decided to leave out, it was Ehrlich who chose the commodities to bet on, (an assortment of metals), not Simon.
And yes, the value of metals is massively important to food supply, nothing can be properly processed, transported, cleaned without the use of metals or without machines comprised of metal components, furthermore, what this bet succeeds to explain is that if commodities of long term stable supply are to become more scarce simultaneously over a given timeframe, they would without a doubt get more expensive, therefore the prices of said commodities would all increase, but during this bet, all the metals that Ehrlich chose instead went down in value, ALL OF THEM, in other words, commodities have not become more scarce over time, they have become more plentiful and available than ever before, even while our population has exploded in numbers.
At this point kurzgesagt and TED Ed must be working together behind the scenes cause the way they've been posting within an hour of each other for the last few uploads👀
Ofc they are
Optimists are fools. Having some experience with large families, I will testify that the soup gets thinner as the family increases in size.
Family sizes are reducing all over the world
Optimists are fools and yet are the sole reason you can waste everyone's time writing things on the internet sir
Ok Malthus
I absolutely loathe that the extreme limit at which earth can sustain human life is central to the overpopulation debate - rather than the imbalance at which human activity begins to impact the environment and other species in ways from which they cannot sustainably recover. The sweeping negative effects of human activity are already here and are still getting worse. The debate has been anthropocentric which has negated the fact that we are severely straining an environmental system on which all life is dependent. Sure we can endure more people for now - but is that what the earth really needs? More stress/impact on its climate? No and it hasn't been for a long time. We need to seek balance, not the extreme limit.
In long terms of view, Ehrlich will be right. Normal people of all over the world already feel it.
Poverty and world hunger has been dropping ever since
@@johnkop4 Yes. And housing prices of whole world is sky rocketing.
Overpopulation with Earth’s potential and current yet to be fully experimented experimental technologies is as real as how many people say it. Not reality
Ehrlich's already right, this was just was a very flawed bet (and moved in time, he could have won that too). They actually tried to make another bet, but Simon died before it could happen (Ehrlich is actually still alive).
@@bestplayer08 That has nothing to do with the population number. It's just basic supply/demand economics combined with a rise in the cost of lumber.
EAT THE RICH.
Animation provided by Mrs. Lipshitz third grade class !
I like these kind of videos because I'm learning english and with these videos I'm learning pretty much
You know you’ve watched too much TED ED when yoy can recognise every animation style
Don't worry, Bill Gates is dealing with this...
We just need a Thanos
3:53 And how would we distribute those resources "equitably"?
A large goverment that controls all the food supply 🤔I think we can call it the world economic forum
Human Population and Food supply have a correlation according to the Human Cannibal I asked.
The
Lol
Hannibal turned into a scientist I guess 😂😂
Economists make me laugh lol. Both made unfounded predictions without evidence. Both wagered using unrelated currency. So far removed both are from actual problem solving.
today theres the opposite problem, the population is aging and in developed countries is starting to fall, economists are worried that in countries like japan the already strained workforce will collapse due to the high number of retired citizens
What goes up must come down. The earth is healing itself and it definitely will someday or the other.