Correction, please!(Correction Notice)

The End is Nigh ... Again

ITEM: The "Earth Will Expire By 2050," bannered the Sunday Observer. "Earth's population will be forced to colonize two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate ... ," reported the London publication on July 7th. "A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ... warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life."

CORRECTION: Apocalyptic fear mongers, such as the WWF, invariably appeal to the enemies of progress. The Club of Rome's unfulfilled prophecies and Paul Ehrlich's "population bomb" dud have probably been the most famous myths in recent decades.

As the Scotsman noted of the Club of Rome, had the U.K. "frozen our standard of living at 1975 levels, we would be a third poorer than we are now. And world income per head has about doubled in real terms since 1975. But who remembers a failed prediction about the end of the world when you can always make another one?" Among Ehrlich's claims: Some 250,000 species were going extinct annually. By his calculations, as the Statistical Assessment Service has demonstrated, "the last living animal on Earth would have died sometime last year."

WWF's assertions are similarly hysterical -- such as "Humanity's footprint is crushing the Earth" -- extrapolating past the point of no return. The evidence, says the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell, shows that agriculture production is up, energy is more abundant, and water is cleaner in the developed areas of the globe than ever before.

Said Ebell, as reported by Fox News: "Our only limit to natural resources is human ingenuity. For a while human beings had to use wood for energy and now we use coal and tomorrow we will use something else. If you agreed that the only place to find energy was in whale oil ... well, yes, this would be conceived as a crisis, I suppose."

United States of Africa?