I suggest you check out GetReligion’s great piece contrasting the media attention given to geneticist Dr. Francis S. Collins, on account of his being publicly an evangelical (and thinking it compatible with science), vs. the virtual silence given to Holdren. It also has a list of crazy views he’s espoused, and cites appropriately to another source, which has page scans from one of the books he co-wrote with the Ehrliches:
— Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
— The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
— Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
— People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
— A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.
But at least he doesn’t think anything crazy, like that God and science can co-exist, right, media?
Update: Great coverage on the issue back in 2008 by a New York Times columnist. No, really.
Update #2: Apparently, Holdren was actually part of the bet against Simon, according to Bjorn Longborg, who wrote a book (Skeptical Environmentalist) which dealt with lots of related issues. Here’s what he wrote:
“Frustrated with the incessant claims that the Earth would run out of oil, food and raw materials, the economist Julian Simon in 1980 challenged the established beliefs with a bet. He offered to bet $10,000 that any given raw material – to be picked by his opponents – would have dropped in price at least one year later. The environmentalists Ehrlich, Harte and Holdren, all of Stanford University, accepted the challenge, stating that “the lure of easy money can beirresistible.” The environmentalists staked their bets on chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, and they picked a time frame of ten years. The bet was to be determined ten years later, assessing whether the real (inflation-adjusted) prices had gone up or down. In September1990 not only had the total basket of raw materials but also each individual raw material dropped in price. Chromium had dropped 5 percent, tin a whopping 74 percent. The doomsayers had lost.
Truth is they could not have won. Ehrlich and Co. would have lost no matter whether they had staked their money on petroleum, foodstuffs, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, minerals or phosphates. They had all become cheaper.” (SE:137).