Next Big Future
Paul Ehrlich says we are entering the sixth great mass extinction.
Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction
There have been papers which show that species and area relationships always overestimate extinctions.
Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued Among the measures he suggested in that book was population control, to be used in his opinion if voluntary methods were to fail.
Julian Lincoln Simon, a Cornucopian economist has argued that overpopulation is not a problem in itself, and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that in the long run, human creativity would constantly improve living standards, and that the Earth's resources were, in effect, infinite. Ehrlich called Simon the leader of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that new resources would miraculously appear and reasserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals. This exchange led to the Simon-Ehrlich wager, a bet about the trend of prices for certain metals that he made in 1980 with, and lost to, Julian Simon
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