Are humans using up Earth’s scarce resources too quickly, posing an existential threat to humanity itself, as the chief villain in the popular movies “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” believed?

No, says Gale Pooley, an economist and associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, who will more fully explain his answer Monday, Sept. 9th at a luncheon on Maui sponsored by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

Pooley recently co-authored with Cato Institute senior policy analyst Marian L. Tupy a study,“The Simon Abundance Index: A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources,”showing that Earth’s resources are actually becoming more plentiful.

Published by the Washington.D.C.-based Cato Institute, the report builds on the ideas of the late University of Maryland economist Julian Simon, who believed that people operating in a freely functioning price system are the “ultimate resource” that makes other resources more plentiful. In short, the report concluded, “Population growth and abundance seem to be connected.”

Yet many people still advocate population-control policies. With the best of intentions, it seems, the population-control policy of Thanos, the fictional supervillain in the “Avengers” movies, was to destroy half the population of the known universe.

“It’s simple calculus. The universe is finite. Its resources are finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting,” he said in “Infinity War.”

The Avengers eventually kill Thanos in “Endgame,” but the idea that motivated his villainy lives on, said Pooley at FreedomFest 2019 in Las Vegas in July. And the only way to kill that idea, he said, is to replace it with a better one, which he will present at the upcoming Grassroot Institute of Hawaii luncheon.

Please join us for this important — and likely very entertaining — presentation, at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Monday, Sept. 9, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Keli’i Akina, Ph.D., president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, will be the moderator.

Admission is $10 and includes a luncheon buffet.

Pooley has taught at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University and the College of Idaho. Pooley earned his BBA in Economics at Boise State University. He did graduate work at Montana State University and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Idaho. Pooley serves on the board for HumanProgress.org.

For more information, please call (808) 591-9193 or email at info@grassrootinstitute.org.

E Hana Kakou!