Overview and Introduction

    What will the future bring?  Will we be "better off" or "worse off"?  Of course, nobody can answer this question definitively for a number of reasons:
    First, is it even the appropriate question?  (should our concern be merely whether humans are better or worse off?)
    Second, what do we mean by "better off" or "worse off"  (if we have more of every good, including environmental quality, clearly we're better off, but what if we have more of some things and less of others--is it easy to know an improved state has occurred?)
    Third, since we have individual tastes that vary (e.g. backpacker vs. snowboarder, hedonist vs. ascetic, variations in intergenerational preferences), a future that many people will find better may be thought to be worse by many others.
    Finally, we can never--in a meaningful way--know what the future will bring for otherwise we don't have to wait for it!

"Doomsters" Versus "Boomsters"--views of the future

    Doomsters (likely the most common view in the class) such as Paul Ehrlich, Club of Rome, Malthus, et al. believe that growing income and population will inexorably lead to greater "throughput" in production, with the direct consequence that a) we either pollute ourselves to death, or b) we run out of resources.  Related beliefs involve continued encroachment into wilderness areas, species destruction, and possibly a more indirect downfall for mankind by exceeding the assimilative capacity of ecosystems that sustain us.
    Boomsters (a rarer and less well-advertised position) such as Julian Simon or Herman Kahn, believe that growing income increases the demand for environmental quality, while growing population provides more minds and labor to solve problems as they arise.  As is the case with all problems, environmental problems are worse in the poorest countries of the world and the relationship between population and pollution is less clear than you might imagine.
    The "truth" is, of course, somewhere between these extreme positions (Doomsters recognize obvious improvements in levels of environmental quality in certain settings, while Boomsters recognize that mistakes do happen--we have Love Canals, Times Beaches, Bophals, etc.).  It is empirically clear that trends in environmental quality are definitely mixed; there are cases of definite improvement (U.S. air quality would be an example), of definite decay (the world's fisheries would be an example), and of uncertainty whether a change is good or bad  or whether there has been a change.  We will provide some The real question of interest (one we'll return to at the end of the semester): Is our future to be characterized as a "one step forward-two steps back" process or is it a "two steps forward-one step back" process?  If the former, the Doomsters will be fundamentally correct, but if the latter, the Boomsters will see their views validated by unfolding events.
    There is another point to raise at this time.  The Boomsters spend a great deal of time making fun of a wide range of erroneous predictions that have been made by Doomsters over many years--we will talk about a number of these, including the Simon/Ehrlich bet, during the semester.  However, the Doomsters counter that without their dire predictions perhaps the changes that "saved the day" would not have occurred.  They argue that their warnings have been vital in bringing about  many of environmental improvements we have seen.  However, others are concerned that many Doomsters have clearly overstated certain dangers (perhaps in the hopes of gaining more donations--Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc. are, after all, businesses that requiring funding).   The concern is that after repeated "Chicken Little" or "Crying Wolf" warnings (recall the children's stories), the citizenry may stop listening--even when the impending danger is very real.