Life on earth becomes more and more pleasant. That is the happy message from the American professor dr. Julian Simon from the University of Maryland. For the past 20 years he has been telling that the environment keeps on getting cleaner, that world hunger is diminishing, that life expectancy is on the increase, that everybody is getting richer and richer - and all that not in spite of the growth of world population, but thanks to this growth.

The only thing that disturbs Simon’s mood is the fact that so few people believe him: the world seems to swallow in pessimism about the environment, overpopulation, climatic change and this pessimism not just poisons the social atmosphere, it is also terribly expensive for all of us.

Simons’ ideas are controversial, but not everywhere. The World Wild Life Fund once called him a ‘terrorist’ but in circles of economists  he gets a lot of support and in circles of geologists for example his ideas are quite commonplace.

Simon was a successful entrepreneur and graduated in both psychology and economy. He published more than 200 scientific articles, as well as many books. He is definitely not an idiot, but he has a message that is seldom heard, of which maybe the central point is that he does not see the human being as an entity that  only creates problems on earth, but has also the ability to  solve these problems.

At the end of the sixties Simon, like many other people, was worried. For wasn’t it very logical that the exponentially growing world population would exhaust the earth’s resources and that in the end all these people couldn’t be fed anymore?  Wouldn’t war become inevitable as well as ecological catastrophes?  Simon studied the problem thoroughly and finally concluded: there is no problem.

Referring to the findings of fellow economist Kuznet Simon emphasizes the fact that there is no relationship between overpopulation  or (population growth) and poverty or hunger. Other factors than the population density are much more important.

Example: Hong Kong has much more inhabitants than mainland China (per square kilometer). According to the population growth alarmists Hong Kong should be very poor. Hong Kong is very rich.

But how about the quality of life? Is a place full of ugly sky scrapers a nice place to live? Simon shrugs: that is a matter of personal taste. Lots of people prefer to live in  Hong Kong instead of elsewhere. ‘A long time ago I was in Hong Kong and people were poor and had to sleep in the streets. That is not so anymore. I call that progress’.

Yes, admits Simon, there is hunger in the Horn of Africa, and this seems to illustrate his point: it is certainly not an overcrowded area. The cause of the hunger here (and anywhere according to Simon) is the civil war and mismanagement of the economy, not overpopulation. Simon goes further: were the North African region more densely populated, there would also be more roads, more means of communication, more ways to attack the existing problems.

But hasn’t the Club of Rome taught us that exponential growth  can have very serious consequences?. Simon is not impressed. During a certain period in the sixties the number of university buildings in the USA grew exponentially. If this growth were really without limits the whole of the USA would now be covered with university buildings . This is not the case, growth limits itself and there s no reason to fear these limits. People have the power to overcome them.

Yes, population grows all over the planet, Simon admits it - and likes it. Why should we view newborn people only as mouth’s to feed? They have also brains that can help solve problems, invent new medicines, new products. He says that more people on earth has also meant a much larger food production.

Development economists agree with Simons assessment that food production has increased much faster than population growth and also that the general nutritional status of all people on earth has vastly improved during the last decades. This trend has not come to an end, food production is still on the increase and there are no signs that we are running out of agricultural space on earth. On the contrary: In Holland, a very environmentally and third world conscious country large projects are undertaken to break dikes to transform food producing land into wild nature.

The worlds’ future looks bright and there is no reason whatsoever for birth control programs. If one chooses that his/her own family is large enough, that is all right with Simon. He sees no religious barriers for birth control, but he does also not see  ecological reasons for birth control program’s like in China.  Simon is horrified by the Chinese attempts to enforce one child families.

But will not an overpopulated earth deplete the earth’s resources, raw materials like metals? On the contrary  says Simon and tells about his bet with the population growth alarmist Paul Ehrlich. The latter claimed that as a result of overpopulation several metals would become spectacularly more expensive during a decade. Simon claimed the opposite: everything would become cheaper. Simon won. In circles of geologists this is no news, all over the world resources in raw materials are still found in quantities that are too big for humanity to consume on the short term.

Imagine however that all the physical stock of oil would be depleted. Nobody knows when this happens, if it happens, but imagine? Simon seems happy to look forward to the situation: ’We need more and bigger problems’ he says and  explains how the deforestation of England led to the development of cars and airplanes.

In the 17th century English deforestation created a shortage of fire wood. This led to the development of coal mining. This technology suffered from flooding of the mines, which stimulated the development of the steam engine. But you can use a steam engine not just for pumping water, you can also put wheels under it and then you have a locomotive. The train technology stimulated the car and the airplane, and so human creativity transformed an ecological problem into progress.

Scarcity of resources sharpens creativity according to Simon. Scarcity makes resources expensive and people are always looking for cheap alternatives - which they usually find. He hates recollection campaigns and recycling campaigns for aluminum tins and old paper they suggest  a scarcity that is nonexistent.

But what will the environment look like in such a world? Simon doesn’t worry. He shows figures from the US Environmental Protection Agency that indicate that many polluting factors are decreasing: large parts of the earth are getting cleaner and cleaner.  But yes the countries in the former eastern block are heavily polluted, but he has never said that this world is without problems. He only wants to reestablish faith in the human power to survive:’ When there is a fox around,  you can count on it that the number of chickens will decrease, where there are people the number of chickens will increase’.

Theo Richel