POLS 3370 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Demographic Transition, Thomas Robert Malthus, Garrett Hardin
15 Oct 2017
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Promethean response: environmentalists overstate the nature and scale of environmental problems, and they understate the capacity for human innovation. Natural resources, ecosystems and nature do not exist. Malthusian perspectives on poverty and population belief that we have an inability to exercise restraint between carrying capacity and the poor, but there are natural checks such as famine and social welfare only delays the inevitable. Lomberg : believes that resources, energy and food are becoming more, not less abundant. Fewer people are starving and dying as a result of natural disaster. fewer people are starving and dying as a result of natural disasters. Pollution abatement is improving with economic growth (the environmental kuznets curve ) Lomborg"s thesis was roundly criticized for simplifying the position of environmentalists and for using selected and distorted (dryzek, 57) evidence to support his claims. In 2003, he was found guilty of engaging in academic dishonesty, a charge that was eventually over-ruled by the danish.
