The Population Bomb and Other Disasters

In 1968, two Stanford professors, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, wrote a book at the suggestion of the executive director of the Sierra Club, a prominent environmentalist organization. Titled *The Population Bomb*, the book warned that increasing birth rates—helped by the abundance of energy—would become a species-level crisis. Too many people would mean too little food, water, and land.

Chaos would erupt.

Doom would follow.

All of this would happen in the coming decades.

The book’s ideas were not new. They were a modern repackaging of the economics of Thomas Malthus, who warned that an increase in economic growth would inevitably lead to a higher population than natural resources could sustain.

What both Malthus and the Ehrlichs failed to foresee was the degree to which human ingenuity would lead to innovations that would meet growing human needs. The result is that even though the population is larger than ever, the world’s food production per capita has never been higher than in modern times.

But tragically, fallacious Malthusian ideas have had a real-life impact on government policy. For example, lingering concerns about the population bomb led to horrific population control programs in countries around the world. Most know about China’s one-child policy. Less known is that the Peruvian government used US foreign-aid money to sterilize indigenous women involuntarily. Other population control policies were implemented around the world

The failure of these predictions has not disgraced the Malthusian worldview, however. In fact, its advocates continue to be treated as respected leaders in their fields. In 2023, Paul Ehrlich appeared on 60 Minutes to offer new warnings of extinction, despite a fifty-plus-year track record of being wrong.

The unfortunate reality is that predictions of environmental doom are useful for those that desire power. The greater the threat, the more power is needed. As history has shown, the government grows in times of crisis and rarely ever shrinks once the emergency has passed.

Even as concerns about global cooling have transformed into worries about global warming, the underlying need for power remains: the government needs to regulate, tax, and enjoy generally greater control over the organization of society.

This does not mean, of course, that all warnings about pollution and other negative externalities are not justified. What it does mean is that politicizing science is extremely dangerous. Whether it’s climate change, foreign policy, or covid-19, the unfortunate reality is that those that argue for aggressive state intervention are often rewarded with increased government funding. We pay for it with taxes, higher prices, and a loss of liberty.

The incentives of institutional research matter. In today’s world, they are too often guided by politics, not science.

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[EricSmith]

Reminds me of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine telling everyone that meat would kill them. Same funding source as PETA.

[dks]

Look at the US, ingenuity is gone. Really.

[slee]

This story also shows that so called experts, professors, ph d s don't know much, or at the very least make mistakes . I was told by "experts" I was this or that . I proved them wrong .

[ColtraneTaylor]

The world has been catching up to Malthus and Ehrlich's errors in the last few years. I read this a week ago in The Globe and Mail: "Population decrease is irreversible. How will we manage the decline of humanity?"

[AnarchistMetalhead]

Had this been an honest concern about feeding everyone alive, the population control message would have been targeted at the areas suffering from hunger, such as central affrica, not at the areas with surplus food production.

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

Well, hate or like it; there is a limit.

It surprises me that the institution that always says that a boom funded by debt and inflation will lead to a bust is that critical of a theory that says that too many humans will lead to collapse.
Because exactly the same is true with human life and the resources required for it. You can pump aquifers beyond a sustainable rate to enable a bigger population. But at some point the buffer is gone...

[ncarmstron]

The whiff of right wing bias is unfortunate. It unnecessarily casts doubt on your thesis. Why denigrate Greta Thunberg? She has nothing to do with Ehrlich and past population projections.

[homewall]

Rather than focus on consumption of resources, what about the covering of land, the pollution on land, rivers, lakes and oceans, more harm from droughts and fires, etc. The climate change issues are because of pounds of carbon emissions, and each person produces more and requires more to be created to support their lives.