Some letters in The Wall Street Journal‘s Monday Letters section want comment.

Even though they [Paul Ehrlich and his wife] included in the book the warning that “we can be sure that none of them will come true as stated,” the scenarios became tools of critics.

And justifiably so. The Ehrlichs correctly observed that the details of their warnings would vary with reality, but they were insisting that the thrust and core of their predicted scenarios must inevitably occur.

…it is hard to dispute that the earth has finite natural resources, limited human carrying capacity and that excessive growth has resulted in environmental destruction.

It’s true enough that the planet, being of finite size, must have finite resources. But those upper bounds are so far beyond the reach of “human carrying capacity,” as to be laughable as limits. And coring an entire planet is about the only limit demonstrable to human carrying capacity. Nor has there been any “excessive growth” leading to environmental destruction. It’s uncontrolled, irresponsible growth that has done that, and when controls are applied, while not limiting growth with them, prosperity has occurred and existing destruction repaired. See, for instance, the terrors of acid rain and the ozone hole.

Ehrlich wasn’t a prognosticator, a modern-day Nostradamus. He was writing—and I assume hoping to sell—a book. Catastrophe and fear of the unknown sell better than optimism and serendipity.

Gee, I write private detective novels and a few political philosophy books, all of which I hope to sell. Each of them contains a measure of catastrophe and fear, or predictions of catastrophe. Maybe I can be a population bomb or climate expert, too.

People who deal in hypotheticals and emotions are generally unswayed by facts. Likewise, those who deal in proven outcomes are unmoved by feelings and theoretical futures. Thus, we speak (or yell) past each other, using very different languages. I don’t know how this ends.

One way in which it ends is those hypotheticals and hysterical feelings are continually falsified by unrolling reality, facilitating an increasing ability simply to ignore the fear-mongers and leave them behind.