Population Prophet Hurls New Bombs : Books: Millions already have died and the environment has been damaged due to overpopulation, says Paul Ehrlich in a new work on global living.

The brink of an abyss always yawns under Paul Ehrlich’s feet--but it doesn’t stop him from walking across the university campus to a hearty lunch.

It’s a little surprising, really, to encounter the famed population expert in the person of this cheerful, outgoing biology professor who praises the Stanford University faculty club’s ample buffet--notable for the absence of raw whole grains, undercooked vegetables and cholesterol warning signs. Where is his hair shirt? Where is the ascetic scholar emaciated by self-denial, spiritually eroded by the follies of mankind?

It’s soon clear that that Ehrlich doesn’t exist. And probably never did. (Another clue: The photo of a woman in a wet T-shirt taped to his office door.)

Yet more than 20 years ago Ehrlich’s image as a doomsayer was stamped in popular lore with publication of his book, “The Population Bomb,” a polemic warning of the manifold perils of unchecked human reproduction. With its scenarios of a planet battered by food riots and doomed to nuclear war or rampant killer disease, “The Population Bomb” made the young academic an instant prophet of bad times for all in the late 20th Century.

And thanks to appearances on “The Tonight Show” and other media exposure, Ehrlich became a celebrity scientist. For budding environmentalists, political activists and much of a generation raised on Vietnam and the atomic bomb, Ehrlich’s preachments of small families and respect for the Earth were gospel.

Now, Ehrlich is back with a sequel, “The Population Explosion” (Simon & Shuster), co-authored with wife Anne. The new volume is an update that encompasses both the demographic changes of the last two decades and increased understanding of man’s impact on the global environment, including the potential for a “greenhouse effect” on world climate. It also is sprinkled with the Ehrlichs’ version of Miss Manners--socially correct responses to the population crisis. Example: Don’t give baby presents to families with more than two children. (The Ehrlich’s have one daughter, Lisa, a 34-year-old economist who has a 15-month-old daughter.)

Just as “The Population Bomb” turned Ehrlich’s life upside down, the new volume is propelling the 57-year-old grandfather into a whirlwind of activity that makes even checking his telephone answering machine a rush job. Until at least Earth Day on April 22, Ehrlich says his life will be a blur of airliners, television shows and lectures, culminating with a prestigious conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

He clearly has the stamina for it.

Ehrlich’s most striking characteristic is a bountiful energy backstopped by hyper-alertness. He often seems to be doing two things at once, checking his electronic calendar while giving an interview, asking his secretary to schedule a phone call while he hustles a visitor out the door to lunch. All the while, he is affable, seemingly unpressured and ready to leaven serious topics with a mild joke or a dash of self-deprecation.

But Ehrlich never strays far from his chosen bailiwicks of science and public policy. Since his rise to prominence, he has become a hybrid, he says. “I’m a part-time scientist and a part-time politician. I like the science better . . . But let’s face it, one of the major human activities is politics. In terms of what we call the human predicament, the real answers lie in the political sphere--trying to get people mobilized to do things differently.”

Clearly, “The Population Explosion” is a political book as well as a short but comprehensive treatise on acid rain, drought, the ozone layer, agriculture, disease and demographics. But it is, Ehrlich maintains, “a brand new book,” less strident and more reflective than its predecessor, which was created as “a short punchy book that would really bring this issue to people’s attention.”

In this case, restraint may be in the eye of the beholder. “The Population Explosion” opens with this bang: “In 1968, ‘The Population Bomb’ warned of impending disaster if the population explosion was not brought under control. Then the fuse was burning; now the population bomb has detonated.”

In this same preface, the Ehrlichs go on to warn that at least 200 million people, most of them children, have died of hunger and related diseases in the last 22 years, that 11,000 babies are born every hour, that 95 million are born each year and that the world is being despoiled and smothered by a population now totaling 5.3 billion, up from 3.5 billion in 1968.

Later, the Ehrlichs present a crucial argument: Children of affluent parents take a greater toll on the environment than children of poor parents because they consume more resources and require more material possessions. (The authors also serve up an equation for gauging the impact of population on environment, the I=PAT formula, meaning Impact equals a country’s population multiplied by its affluence and technological development.)

In the first chapter of “The Population Explosion,” however, the Ehrlichs acknowledge that--dramatic as their numbers seem--politicians and the public do not generally share their alarm. Population increases occur relatively slowly and therefore lack the drama of an “event” such as a war or earthquake, they explain. Therefore, few are willing to devote time and concern to the issue, they write. But that doesn’t mean population growth won’t at some point overwhelm global resources, creating a series of very noticeable disastrous events, they add.

In fact, Ehrlich believes that the human brain is evolving too slowly to deal with today’s rapid changes in both culture and technology. Last year he and colleague Robert Ornstein published “New World, New Mind,” which called for efforts to reprogram consciousness so that the human race can better deal with “slow motion” disasters such as AIDS and the greenhouse effect.

Ehrlich’s stress on the difference between the original population book and the sequel may be a tacit admission that there is a price to fame. In a world where TV “sound bites” don’t allow time for complex explanations, he admits that he has been tagged “the population nut.”

“Our original title for ‘The Population Bomb’ was ‘Population/Resources/Environment,’ ” he explains. “But the publishers control title and they changed it to ‘The Population Bomb,’ which is how I got to be known as the population nut--’Ehrlich’s only interested in population,’ which is why people don’t bother to read the books.”

Ehrlich also claims that he doesn’t expect to make many converts with the latest foray into print.

“The Population Explosion” is for those “who want to know the current situation but don’t need to be persuaded,” he says. “Most people who are educated and keep track of these things are aware that there’s a population dimension to the (environmental) problem. But they’re not aware how big it is, what’s actually going on.”

Ehrlich himself is aware that the new book is being launched into a more skeptical environment than existed in the 1960s.

His views have already come in for critical comment in the April 2 Forbes magazine, which quoted one demographer as accusing Ehrlich of not understanding “that human beings are not lemmings.” The magazine concluded that Ehrlich has an audience because of “the quasi-religious beliefs of the anti economic growth, pro big government wing of the environmentalist movement.”

Writing in April’s Reason magazine, Andrew Ferguson reaches much the same conclusion, labeling Ehrlich as “chief whooper-upper” for a band of environmental “apocalyptics.” The Libertarian monthly’s entire issue is devoted to a questioning look at the rejuvenated environmental movement.

Meanwhile, Discover magazine’s April issue, devoted to “The Struggle to Save Our Planet,” contains a main article on the growing debate over Ehrlich’s views.

In both Forbes and Discover, Ehrlich’s principal opponent is Julian L. Simon, an economics professor at the University of Maryland who views population growth--on balance--as healthy. Simon’s ideas, which seem to differ absolutely from Ehrlich’s, are presented in detail in “The Ultimate Resource,” published in 1981, and in last year’s “The Economic Consequences of Immigration,” which makes a case for reduction--and possible elimination--of U.S. immigration quotas.

Among other things, Simon maintains that more people generate more ideas and more business and help increase economic productivity. He argues that problems usually associated with overpopulation should be blamed on ham-fisted governments and over-regulated, wasteful economies.

Strikingly, Simon, a one-time gadfly who became influential with policy-makers of the Reagan Administration, argues that natural resource scarcity is largely a myth. Throughout history, Simon asserts, resource scarcities have inspired the invention of substitutes or the discovery of new--and cheaper--sources of supply. Moreover, he maintains that legislation, regulation and human inventiveness are making the environment cleaner.

So it’s not surprising that Simon and the Ehrlichs don’t bother with niceties when they talk about each other.

Said Simon of the Ehrlichs: “They’re a friction in the wheels of progress--but the wheels of progress just run right over them.” In what may be the ultimate insult between academics, Simon says the Ehrlichs are “ahistorical,” meaning that they ignore the lessons of the past. Anne Ehrlich, who leaves most of the spotlight to her husband, charges that Simon has an “emotional” need to look on the bright side. She scoffs at Simon’s contention that population growth on the whole is beneficial, particularly on the intellectual front. “If that were true, why aren’t India and China leaders in science?” she asks.

Says Paul Ehrlich, “The real optimists are always saying, ‘Don’t worry we can feed 60 quadrillion people. Everything’s going to be great.’ One of the advantages of getting older is I can remember what people were saying in 1968. The same sort of stuff--’Oh we’re going to be able to feed 6 billion, 10 billion people, no sweat.’ And here we are with more people in absolute misery today--in absolute numbers, not percentage.”

As for criticism in the media, he shrugs and says, “If the (conservative) press isn’t against you, you just know you’re not doing the right thing.”

Clearly, much of the debate between the Ehrlichs and their critics evokes the classic analogy about the difference between optimists and pessimists: Is the glass half-empty or half-full?

But nearly everyone agrees that population and the problems attendant to it are far from predictable.

As the Ehrlichs note in their book, the rate of increase of global population has declined slightly since the early 1960s, from about 2.1% to 1.8%, partly due to unexpected birthrate declines in developed nations. And more declines may be in store, they say, but only if there is concerted political action to help reduce the growth rate.

Ehrlich himself readily acknowledges that his views are often subjective. “All science is value-loaded” he says. “. . .I spend a lot of time in talks saying, ‘OK that’s the end of the science; what should we do about it?’ Here are my opinions.

“I try and end most talks (by) saying, ‘First of all check it out for yourself so you can be sure I’m not a paid agent of the international ecological conspiracy.’ One of the things that’s sad in our society is that people feel they have to choose between talking heads, rather than checking out the numbers for themselves and drawing their own conclusions.”

He says he realizes, too, that many who agree with his assessments often feel overwhelmed by the apparent enormity of population growth and related environmental ills. That’s why “The Population Explosion” contains such helpful hints as not congratulating parents with more than two children.

“I think a certain amount of peer pressure is something you can do,” he says. “You don’t have to be unkind about it. We don’t send a letter saying, ‘All right, you had three, the hell with you.’ We just don’t send baby presents. Of course, most of our friends wouldn’t expect it.”

On a more serious note, the Ehrlichs believe that grass-roots political action is the key to turning around a situation that they frankly see as almost irreversible. To that end, the entire final portion of “The Population Explosion” is devoted to form letters to public and elected officials urging more money for family planning and greater attention to environmental problems linked to population growth.

Globally, the Ehrlichs advocate greater worldwide intergovernmental cooperation and a “Global Commons Regime” that would have “some authority” over international aspects of agriculture, deforestation, power generation, automobiles, the manufacture of chemicals and other pollutants and toxic wastes. As for his own family--and himself--Ehrlich says he is apprehensive about the way this millennium will end.

“I’m not looking forward to the next decade or so in the sense that I’m worried that we’ll keep losing ground and I’ll die figuring that my child and grandchild will not have it very good,” he says.

“I would like to live through the next decade because I think the next decade is going to tell the story. If we keep sort of bobbing along like we are now, I will advise my daughter and grandchild to live it up while they have the chance. But if we get the environmental equivalent of Eastern Europe, then I think they could face a very exciting and very happy life.”