Reactions to The Bet

After completing Paul Sabin's book, the Bet, I found that I really enjoyed this text. I thought that Sabin did a great job at not only discussing Ehrlich's and Simon's  1980 bet, but also at bringing the reader through the environmental history of the time period. For instance, I found that I knew a significant amount about President Nixon, and how he helped protect the environment throughout his period but it was nice that Sabin went into greater detail about it all. Due to still being in school and learning more about the environment every semester, I did not realize the big names within the field such as Ehrlich, and this book definitely helped me realize what side I leaned towards more. I realized that I leaned towards Ehrich's ideas more, but also found him to be a bit to radical for me at the same time. I believe that Sabin made this more clear for me through his text, because he did not seem biased throughout the majority of this book, and did a great job at talking about everything from both Ehrlich's and Simon's perspectives. Another good perspective on the book was written by Simon Nicholson called, "The Birth of Free-Market Environmentalism," where he discusses Sabin's analysis of the 1980 bet and the overall government throughout that time period & the present time period. Overall, I found Nicholson's perspective to be well done because it did a great job identifying what was bad and good about both Ehrlich's and Simon's ideas about the environment. He also did great at recognizing that even though Simon won the bet in 1990, it doesn't mean that his views on the environment are totally accurate.