Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990.

Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up.

Julian Simon won handily and, per the terms of the wager, Ehrlich paid Simon the difference in price between the same quantity of metals in 1980 and 1990 (which was $576.07).

Jared Diamond claims (Collapse) that 'Simon believed “Copper can be made from other elements” and thus there is no risk of a copper shortage', perhaps explaining his confidence in the bet. Diamond claims the notion is absurd, since copper is itself an element and thus cannot be made from other elements, by definition.

External links

• http://www.overpopulation.com/simon_bet.html
• Overpopulation -- The Population Explosion "Brownlash" and the wager