Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

9. Environmental Kuznets curve: Ausubel 2015; Dinda 2004; Levinson 2008; Stern 2014. Note that the curve does not apply to all pollutants or all countries, and when it occurs it may be driven by policy rather than happening automatically.

10. Inglehart & Welzel 2005; Welzel 2013, chap. 12.

11. Demographic transitions: Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016d.

12. Muslim population bust: Eberstadt & Shah 2011.

13. M. Tupy, “Humans Innovate Their Way Out of Scarcity,” Reason, Jan. 12, 2016; see also Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

14. Europium Crisis: Deutsch 2011.

15. “China’s Rare-Earths Bust,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2016.

16. Why we don’t run out of resources: Nordhaus 1974; Romer & Nelson 1996; Simon 1981; Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

17. People don’t need resources: Deutsch 2011; Pinker 2002/2016, pp. 236–39; Ridley 2010; Romer & Nelson 1996.

18. Probability and solutions to human problems: Deutsch 2011.

19. The Stone Age quip is commonly attributed to Saudi oil minister Zaki Yamani in 1973; see “The End of the Oil Age,” The Economist, Oct. 23, 2003. Energy transitions: Ausubel 2007, p. 235.

20. Farming pivots: DeFries 2014.

21. Farming in the future: Brand 2009; Bryce 2014; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

22. Future water: Brand 2009; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

23. Environment is rebounding: Ausubel 1996, 2015; Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012; Bailey 2015; Balmford 2012; Balmford & Knowlton 2017; Brand 2009; Ridley 2010.

24. Roser 2016f, based on data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

25. Roser 2016f, based on data from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

26. Environmental Performance Index, http://epi.yale.edu/country-rankings.

27. Contaminated water and cooking smoke: United Nations Development Programme 2011.

28. According to the UN Millennium Development Goals report, the percentage of people exposed to contaminated water fell from 24 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2015 (United Nations 2015a, p. 52). According to data cited in Roser 2016l, in 1980, 62 percent of the world’s population cooked with solid fuels; in 2010, just 41 percent did.

29. Quoted in Norberg 2016.

30. Third-worst stationary oil spill in history: Roser 2016r; US Department of the Interior, “Interior Department Releases Final Well Control Regulations to Ensure Safe and Responsible Offshore Oil and Gas Development,” April 14, 2016, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-releases-final-well-control-regulations-ensure-safe-and.

31. Increased tiger, condor, rhino, panda numbers: World Wildlife Foundation and Global Tiger Forum, cited in “Nature’s Comebacks,” Time, April 17, 2016. Conservation successes: Balmford 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2010; Suckling et al. 2016; United Nations 2015a, p. 57; R. McKie, “Saved: The Endangered Species Back from the Brink of Extinction,” The Guardian, April 8, 2017. Pimm on declining extinction rate: quoted in D. T. Max, “Green Is Good,” New Yorker, May 12, 2014.

32. The paleontologist Douglas Erwin (2015) points out that mass extinctions wipe out inconspicuous but widespread mollusks, arthropods, and other invertebrates, not the charismatic birds and mammals that attract the attention of journalists. The biogeographer John Briggs (2015, 2016) notes that “most extinctions have occurred on oceanic islands or in restricted freshwater locations” after humans have introduced invasive species, because the native animals have nowhere to run; few have taken place on continents or in the oceans, and no ocean species has gone extinct in the past fifty years. Brand points out that the catastrophic predictions assume that all threatened species will go extinct and that this rate will continue for centuries or millennia; S. Brand, “Rethinking Extinction,” Aeon, April 21, 2015. See also Bailey 2015; Costello, May, & Stork 2013; Stork 2010; Thomas 2017; M. Ridley, “A History of Failed Predictions of Doom,” http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not/.

33. International agreements on the environment: http://www.enviropedia.org.uk/Acid_Rain/International_Agreements.php.

34. Healing ozone hole: United Nations 2015a, p. 7.

35. Note that the environmental Kuznets curve may be driven by such activism and legislation; see notes 9 and 40 in this chapter.

36. Density is good: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Brand 2009; Bryce 2013.

37. Dematerialization of consumption: Sutherland 2016.

38. Dying car culture: M. Fisher, “Cruising Toward Oblivion,” Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2015.

39. Peak Stuff: Ausubel 2015; Office for National Statistics 2016. The equivalents in American units are 16.6 and 11.4 tons.

40. See, for example, J. Salzman, “Why Rivers No Longer Burn,” Slate, Dec. 10, 2012; S. Cardoni, “Top 5 Pieces of Environmental Legislation,” ABC News, July 2, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/top-pieces-environmental-legislation/story?id=11067662; Young 2011. See also note 35 above.