The doomsday hoax

The Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner has a nice column today taking apart the central arguments of yet another book predicting environmental degredation, economic decline, resource exhaustion, all followed by pestliance, war, famine etc. Rinse, repeat, points out Gardner, we've all heart it a million times before.

The book in question this time is Bill McKibben's Eaarth, but it could have been any one of dozens of identical books published over the past while. Or, one should add, identical bestselling books, since the public appetite for this stuff seems insatiable. On the other hand, as John Tierney wrote in this week's NYTimes, reviewing the new Matt Ridley book: "Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list."

Do the planet a favour. Read Ridley.