Have you heard? The world is about to end!
No…it isn’t.
Throughout history, people predicted the end of humanity. Recently, 60 Minutes featured doomsayer Paul Ehrlich. They treated him like an expert, even though his dire prophecies have repeatedly been proven utterly wrong.
Instead of interviewing people like Ehrlich, 60 minutes should talk to Marian Tupy, the creator of humanprogress.org. “If you sell the apocalypse, people feel like you are deep and that you care,” Tupy tells me. “But if you are selling rational optimism….” Rational optimism is right. Scaremongers like 60 Minutes are wrong.