From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 10:59 AM
To: Timothy Wilken
Subject: RE: Humanity's Future

I found your article as the first return of a Google search for Humanity's Future. While you seem unaware of the fossil fuel depletion-overpopulation-global warming crisis,

I would have to be living in a cave somewhere :-) not to be aware of the reasons why so many people think these three phenomena constitute crises. Indeed, I discuss all three of these challenges in a part of my Futurology writing that you may have missed: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#Challenges.

By contrast, a(n admittedly brief) inspection of your site yields no evidence that you are aware of the (by far less well-known) arguments that these are not crises. The most notable work in this field of thought is Julian Simon's Ultimate Resource, but searching your site for his name and book yields only a single mention (in a broken-link footnote of a piece about the Singularity). If you want to remain an eco-doomsayer, I'd heavily advise you not to read Simon's book. :-) It's hard to take seriously any doomsaying presentation that doesn't address Simon's analysis. If you know of any specific counter-arguments to Simon's work, I'd be very interested in a reference.

I also found no references to John McCarthy's site about Progress and its Sustainability -- I highly recommend it for Future Positive.

I still found that your article made interesting reading, and the scope of your thinking is to be much admired. I have taken the liberty of reposted it at my website Future Positive with credit and links to your websites.

Best wishes,

Timothy Wilken, MD

I appreciate your inclusion of it on your impressive site; feel free to also include the rest of my writing on Futurology:

Environmental & Political Challenges to Human Progress (2000)

Possible Future Global Catastrophes (2000)

A Timeline of the Future of Humanity and the Universe (2000)

(Including the above files will keep the hyperlinks working, as opposed to copying and pasting directly from my book itself, whose links only work in that file.)