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Biologist and author Paul Ehrlich, the most influential Chicken Little of the last century, died at the age of 93 this week. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” launched decades of institutional panic in government, entertainment and journalism.
Ehrlich’s core neo-Malthusian argument was that overpopulation would exhaust the supply of food and natural resources, leading to a cascade of catastrophes around the world. “The Population Bomb” opens with a bold prediction, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000,” Ehrlich prophesized during a speech in 1971. He also said that the U.S. would be rationing water by 1974, and food by 1980. That smog in L.A. and New York would cause some 200,000 deaths per year. That Americans born after World War II wouldn’t live past 50.
It’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich and his followers had on elite opinion and the popular imagination. A founder of Zero Population Growth (now Population Connection), Ehrlich inspired the modern population control movement.
As Charles Mann chronicled in Smithsonian magazine, Ehrlich inspired global efforts to push abortion, birth control and even sterilization by governments, the United Nations and other international organizations, and foundations. “The results were horrific,” Betsy Hartmann, author of “Reproductive Rights and Wrongs,” told Mann.
“Some population-control programs pressured women to use only certain officially mandated contraceptives,” Mann writes. “In Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, health workers’ salaries were, in a system that invited abuse, dictated by the number of IUDs they inserted into women. In the Philippines, birth-control pills were literally pitched out of helicopters hovering over remote villages. Millions of people were sterilized, often coercively, sometimes illegally, frequently in unsafe conditions, in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.”
In the U.S. the Ehrlicheans talked about requiring licenses for babies and putting birth control in the (dwindling) water supply.
Earlier, I said it’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich’s thesis “had” on elite opinion. The truth, however, is that the grip endures. The sub-headline of the New York Times’ obituary reads, “His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature.”
Premature?
England still exists. Life expectancy in the U.S. just set a record high of 79 (in Europe it’s 81.5). There is no country in the world with a life expectancy under 50. Air and water quality are much better today than they were in 1968. Global food production has exploded. Famine is rare, and almost always a product of war or the backward command-and-control economic thinking Ehrlich supported. And fertility rates are worrisomely declining throughout the developed world, and far beyond. Slightly more than half the world’s nations have sub-replacement birthrates. We have not run out of any resources and America has more forests than it did a century ago.
So, which predictions were “premature,” exactly?
There’s something about Malthusian dread that is simply too seductive to shake. For instance, a few years ago, I noticed something weird. On the 50th anniversary of “Soylent Green,” a dystopian, Ehrlichean film about overpopulation and food shortages, a number of writers opined how “prescient” the movie was. No less than the normally reasonable magazine the Economist wrote, “It is impossible to watch the film today without weighing up how accurate its predictions turned out to be.” It’s an “eerie prophecy,” they declared.
Really? It’s “impossible to watch” a movie about mass state-sponsored euthanasia that turns human beings into high-protein crackers to fend off starvation — set in 2022! — without marveling at the accuracy of its predictions?
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that Ehrlich turned out to be so wildly wrong, but that he was so obviously wrong from the beginning. My old boss Ben Wattenberg battled Ehrlich throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His feud began with a 1970 article for the New Republic titled, “The Nonsense Explosion,” in which Wattenberg explained that even as Ehrlich was writing about soaring birthrates, birthrates were already declining.
Ehrlich’s defenders — and they are legion — argue that he was a true prophet in that prophets issue apocalyptic warnings that, if heeded, can be avoided. This is more nonsense. He said mass “die-offs” were unavoidable with even the best policies, and the anti-growth fads he supported largely made things worse.
Simply put, his pessimism was simply too big to fail.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The author contends that Ehrlich’s core predictions about mass starvation, resource depletion, and societal collapse have been demonstrably incorrect, noting that England still exists, life expectancy has reached record highs of 79 years in the U.S., and no country has fallen below a 50-year life expectancy[5]. Global food production has expanded dramatically while famine has become rare rather than inevitable[5].
The author argues that Ehrlich’s failed predictions were not merely mistimed but were plainly wrong from their inception, pointing out that even as the author warned of soaring birthrates in the 1960s, demographic data already showed declining fertility rates[5]. Additionally, the author maintains that resource exhaustion has not occurred; America has more forests today than a century ago, and no raw materials have been depleted[1].
The author criticizes the real-world consequences of Ehrlich’s influence, documenting how his population control ideology inspired coercive government policies globally, including forced sterilizations in multiple countries and systems that pressured women into using mandated contraceptives[5]. Within the United States, followers of this thinking proposed requiring licenses for babies and introducing birth control into water supplies[5].
The author contends that the persistent appeal of Ehrlich’s Malthusian pessimism stems from its unfalsifiable nature, as adherents can always claim predictions were merely premature, allowing the ideology to endure despite consistent empirical refutation[5]. This framing, the author suggests, reflects a worldview too ideologically rigid to acknowledge demonstrated progress in human welfare and technological innovation[5].
Different views on the topic
Some analysts acknowledge that while specific predictions about timing proved inaccurate, the fundamental premise regarding finite planetary limits retains validity[3]. This perspective holds that Ehrlich’s basic point—that infinite population growth cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet—remains logically sound, even if forecasted catastrophes were incorrectly dated[3].
Certain commentators argue that current population growth of approximately 75 million annually continues to impose measurable pressure on global resources, land, and wildlife, suggesting that dismissing overpopulation concerns entirely overlooks persistent environmental strain[2]. This viewpoint contends that exponential growth models, while subject to criticism for oversimplification, highlight the mathematical reality that sustained growth compounds problems across centuries[3].
Some researchers note that certain predictions within the broader “Limits to Growth” framework achieved accuracy regarding specific environmental concerns, particularly regarding the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and human production of pollution[4]. This perspective suggests that the failure of some resource-depletion predictions does not invalidate concerns about other ecological boundaries, particularly climate change[4].
Alternative analysts assert that technological advancement, while undeniably significant, does not guarantee indefinite resource availability or eliminate the need for sustainable economic models[2]. This viewpoint suggests that attributing all problem-solving to human ingenuity sidesteps questions about whether current consumption patterns remain compatible with long-term planetary health[2].
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