Paul Ehrlich, RIP

The great environmental prophet who got everything wrong never changed.

Paul Ehrlich, author of the monster 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, has died at 93. The book sold millions worldwide, and was translated into dozens of languages. Most college students from the time have told me they were assigned Ehrlich’s book in multiple classes.

I think it was Shostakovich who quipped that Vivaldi only had one idea, which he repeated 383 times. At least Vivaldi’s one idea was a good one. Ever since Ehrlich published his infamous book he came out with a sequel every year or two that repeated his basic Malthusian outlook on humans and the planet. I suppose at least Ehrlich deserves credit for recycling.

Because of course his main prediction was falsified, and quite quickly at that. He predicted that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”

Somehow I missed this news as a teen in the 1970s. (Actually I’ve seen an estimate that the number of people who died of starvation in the 1970s was 1.3 million people, down from 16 million in the 1960s. Anyone ever hear of Norman Borlaug? He’s the person who did more than anyone to prevent even a sliver of Ehrlich’s scenario from coming true.

As it happened, Ehrlich’s book appeared right at the peak year for world fertility, which has been falling precipitously ever since. Now the most pressing population problem is that fertility rates have fallen so fast that in a century or less from now, falling global population may be one of humanity’s most pressing problems. (For example, if South Korea’s fertility rate, already far below replacement level, keeps falling, the last South Korean will be born about 30 years from now.)

Still, the media can’t help themselves. See how the New York Times frames it:

“Premature.”

I debated Ehrlich twice, once at the New School in New York City, and on Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge when it was on PBS, which I’ve posted below. I found Ehrlich to be personally cordial and eager to pursue genuine argument. I reflected that he once was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, but now had to slum it with the likes of me and Peter on PBS.

I once had a fairly serious argument with him about how Hayek’s concept of the “knowledge problem” made his schemes of human improvement both impossible and tyrannical, and he grappled with the argument rather than changing the subject. That set him apart from spokespeople for environmental groups who recite PR talking points that are so superficial that I conclude they either must know what they say is untrue, or that they are genuinely stupid people. Ehrlich was a better class of misanthrope.

Anyway, if you have a spare 25 minutes, let’s roll the tape (yes, this was a long long time ago now):