Customer Reviews

The Population Bomb

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Paul Ehrlich begins the work that gave him instant notoriety (infamy) by saying: "I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time."

He spends the next 180 pages proving conclusively that such is not the case.

It isn't simply that his predictions turned out to be wrong in some of the particulars, but rather that they were so completely wrong that they will NEVER come to pass (though he unrepentantly continues to beat the same drum).

Ehrlich predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, human want would outstrip available resources; whole areas of human endeavor would screech to a halt due to resource scarcity; England would, in all likelihood, cease to exist; India would collapse due to its inability to feed itself; and "inevitable" mass starvation would sweep the globe (including the US). We were on the brink of disaster in 1968, and the future looked very, very dark. In fact, he asserts, "it is now too late to take action to save many of those people."

And yet none of these things have come to pass. Why? Because Ehrlich makes the same mistake that Malthus did: he confuses the concept of finite resources with the notion that they (and the demand for them) are fixed. This is the point that Ehrlich's detractors (most notably Julian Simon) have been making for decades.

Ehrlich did not foresee the technological innovations (the Green Revolution) that have been such a boon to mankind, or changes in both the supply and demand of various resources (such as those in his famous bet with Simon). But such changes were inevitable (far more than the catastrophe that he predicted). The entire history of human endeavor is adaptive. As resources become more scarce, their costs rise. As those costs rise, incentives are created to find alternatives or increase supply or decrease demand. Thus, assuming that either resource availability and/or per capita demand is fixed is not merely an oversight - it is inexcusably poor science.

This is also why claims that "The Population Bomb" was some sort of self-correcting prophecy - that by drawing attention to the problem, disaster was averted - hold no water. This fallacy is based on the assumption that long-term concerns about population growth are somehow more pressing than current hunger problems. Norman Borlaug (one of many involved in the Green Revolution) would have a good laugh about that one. Unfortunately, the major cause of hunger in the world today (in countries like Ethiopia) is not resource scarcity, but political realities (despots) that prevent access to food.

One last point to Ehrlich's defenders: much has been made about cancer rates (and Simon's purported unwillingness to bet on them). But a rise in cancer incidence was to be expected, not because of pollutants or chemicals or environmental degradations, but because cancer is primarily a disease of the aged. The population "explosion" did not occur because more children were/are being born (the opposite is true), but that children were/are no longer "dropping like flies." The average age of the population has risen markedly and so, of course, has the incidence of age related diseases.

My favorite example of Ehrlich-speak: "Enough of fantasy.... Just remember that, at the current growth rate, in a few thousand years everything in the visible universe would be converted into people, and the ball of people would be expanding at the speed of light."

I'm SO glad he'd had "enough of fantasy."

THE POPULATION BOMB is basically one big statement claiming that humans beings are evil. According to this book, there are too many people in the world.

In this book, which first started telling its lies to the world in 1968, the author predicts that before the 20th century is over, huge numbers of people in the United States would starve to death.

Hmm. That's interesting.

Well, anybody who has ever been to a supermarket knows that there is PLENTY of food here.

The author claims that the United States is overpopulated. But this is utter nonsense. If you get in an airplane, and fly from New York to California, and you spend the entire time looking out the window, you will see that the vast majority of the United States is completely UNpopulated.

And even though Paul Erlich was totally wrong in his predictions, today, more than 30 years later, he continues to make these same predictions anyway! And he has a huge number of loyal followers.

On the other hand, fortunately, there is the wonderful book THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE 2 by Julian Simon. This book debunks all of the myths and lies that are in THE POPULATION BOMB. Thank goodness for Julian Simon!

Readers should read Julian Simon's books like "The Ultimate Resource 2" for counterpoints. People through work generate and develop resources and wealth and more people means more wealth. I believe that what we should be worried about is not about the number of people but about their access to education. Education will enable people to be productive members of society and productive people will provide for themselves. I find that at the core of many of the arguments against population growth there is latent racism. Is not that there is too many people is just that there is not enough like me and my friends.

Cassandra was able to foresee the future but was cursed in being unable to make anyone listen to her. Ehrlich has never been right and people keep on listening to him.

Had Ehrlich's 1968 predictions in "The Population Bomb" been right, we would now be stumbling around in a sea of smog killing one another for the few scraps of food we could find. On the other hand, had we adopted the draconian measures Ehrlich proposed in "The Population Bomb", the environment might be as good as it is now and Ehrlich would be declaring victory. However, the price we would have paid in individual liberty and standard of living would have made it a hollow victory.

Paul Erlich wrote the first edition of The Population Bomb in 1968. In it he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to dath in the 1970's, there would be famines in the United States in the 80's, that India was going to wipe itself out through food shortage and even in 1968 could not be saved. Needless to say, none of this has happened (India is now a net grain exporter).

Every few years, Erlich pops up again with a new edition in which the calamity is put off for a few more years. One would assume that someone who cried Wolf this often and this fatuously would be ignored, even derided. But no, Erlich and his anti-growth cohorts go from strength to strength. Why, exactly, I am at a loss to explain, but it seems to stem from some deep deathwish that the modern deep ecologists have, coupled with our Lords and Masters desires to coerce us ever more tightly.

So why was Erlich so wrong? The reasons are explained lucidly and rigorously in Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource 2 (also available from Amazon). Erlich fails to realise that human ingenuity has raised food production per capita (yes, per capita!) by more than 50% since WW2. This against a backdrop of so-called 'population explosion'. That the population explosion myth is a fallacy should need no explanation: some of the richest areas of the world have the highest population densities (England, Holland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan) whereas some of the lowest population density is found in the poorest areas (Mali, Nepal, Sudan). Access to free markets is much more important than population density.

Having said that, I think the real message of Erlich's book is much more pernicious. His central thesis is that population growth must be stemmed by coercion if necessary. Where does he identify the problem areas? Asia and Africa. There is a tacit assumption that brown and yellow babies are somehow less worthy of existence than the nice, pink Erlich variety, and that their parents will not love and cherish them just as much as their counterparts in the richer countries. There is something terribly wrong with those of us alive today making decisions about who is to be alive tomorrow. Erlich is a racist with views on the acceptable limits of coercion that would make the most foam-flecked eugenicist of the Nazi era nod in agreement. The vicious ad hominem attacks he launches on his opponents allow me to respond in kind. This is a nasty and dangerous little book. Read it, but don't get suckered by it, and then read Julian Simon's book.

As a fifth grader I was convinced and very scared by Ehrlich's predictions. I became very interested in the environmental issues that Ehrlich helped make popular. However, upon studying the subject in greater detail I realized that a free society is best prepared to deal with any environmental issues. The facts and research uncovered by Julian Simon convinced me that wealth created by human being helps the environment. Poverty (which is caused by government regulation and totalitarian states) is the biggest threat to the environment. All of Ehrlich's predictions have been shown to be shortsighted and wrong. Read "Population Bomb" but only if you follow it by reading Julian Simon's "The Ultimate Resource", otherwise you will be gullible to the scaremongering politicians warnings that you must give up your individual freedoms in order to save the planet.

Paul Erlich believes that having 6 billion people in the world is a contributing factor to hunger and poverty, because of so-called "dwindling resources."

But he is mistaken.

The most important resource is not coal or oil or natural gas or copper or zinc or iron or aluminum. Instead, the most important resource is human creativity. And the best way to utilize this resource is by having economic freedom.

The land in Africa has a large abundance of many valuable natural resources, yet the people there are very poor. Japan has almost no natural resources, yet the people there are very rich.

When you adjust for inflation, during the 20th century, prices of natural resources have been going down. Throughout the 20th century, natural resources have become more abundant.

Today, the world has more people than ever before. And today, the average person in the world has a BETTER standard of living, MORE food, MORE clothing, MORE housing, MORE medical care, MORE possessions, and a LONGER life expectancy than ever before.

Third world poverty is NOT caused by overpopulation or by a lack of natural resources. Instead, third world poverty is caused by third world government policies.

When one makes a major claim, such as saying that the poverty in Africa is caused by overpopulation and a lack of natural resources, then one should be able to provide facts, sources, statistics, empirical evidence, etc., to be able to back up one's claim. Because without such evidence, the claim has no merit.

When Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, he did not have any evidence to prove his claims. And the reason for this is because such evidence in fact does not exist! For example, consider his claim that Africa is overpopulated. Well, the United Nations has kept population statistics for many decades. These statistics can be looked at by anybody. And according to these statisitcis, most of the countries in Africa have very low population densities. Despite this, Ehrlich claims that there are too many people in Africa. Hmm. Can anybody say 'racism'?

Another of Ehrlich's claims is that Africa does not have enough natural resources. And once again, Ehrlich does not proivide any evidence to support his claim. And again, this is because such evidence simply does not exist. If Ehrlich had simply taken the time to look in any geology textbook, he would have seen that the land in Africa has an abundant supply of many valuable natural resources, including gold, coal, iron, copper, aluminum, lead, diamonds, and many other natural resources. Again, Ehrlich didn't do his homework. Shame on him.

Another claim by Ehrlich is that Africa is incapale of feeding itself. What Ehrlich completely ignores is the fact that Africa has vast expanses of land that could be used to grow crops. In fact, the fact that Africa is situated at the equator allows for Africa to grow food year round.

So Ehrlich makes all these false claims, but he does not back them up with any evidence.

There are reasons for why the people in Africa are so poor. But Ehrlich has ignored these reasons. The reason that Africa doesn't grow enough food to feed itself is because the government policies regarding land use in most African counties are based on collective farming, instead of on private onwership. The reason that Africa does not benitfit from its vast supplies of natural resources is because most of the countries in Africa do not protect private property rights and contracts, and so private companies are afraid to do business in Africa. Thus, the problems of poverty in Africa have everything to do with Africa's own ridiculous government policies, and nothing to do with overpopulation or a lack or natural resources. All of this has been discussed in The Economist, which is a very reliable source.

Ehrlich claims that overpopulation causes poverty. If this were true, then Hong Kong and Japan would be the poorest countries on Earth. Again, the real world shows that Ehrlich is wrong. Again, Ehrlich has not done the proper research.

Ehrlich claimes that a lack of natural resources causes poverty. If this were ture, then Hong Kong and Japan would be the poorest countries on Earth. Once again, Ehrlich has not done his homework.

Ehrlich claims that as population goes up, the quality of life would get worse. According to Ehrlcih, during the 10 year period from 1980 to 1989, four billion people were going to starve to death in the world. And this number was to include 65 million people in the U.S. According to Ehrlich, by the year 2,000, the world was going to run out of oil, copper, iron, aluminum, coal, and many other resources. And according to Ehrlich, life expectancy in the U.S. was supposed to drop to about 40. According to Ehrlich, pollution was going to be so bad that everybody would have to wear a gas mask.

Fortunately, the U.S. government keeps statistics on all of these things. And fortunately, the evidence shows that Ehrlich was wrong in all of his predictions. Today people have more calories per capita and a higher life expectancy than ever before. Natural resources are more abundant than ever before, and this is reflected by the fact that their prices are at historic lows. According to the EPA, pollution levels have fallen substantially since Ehrlich wrote his book.

Today the world has more people than ever before. And today the standard of living is higher than ever before. So in reality, as the population goes up, the quality of life actually gets better! And there is a reason for this. When you have more people, then that means that there will be more minds to invent technology. More scientists. More inventors. More engineers. Etc. All of these things make life better.

During the past two decades, the country Bostwana in Africa has had a relatively strong amount of private porerty rights and economic liberty. This is one of the few countries in Africa that seems to appreciate the economic system known as capitalism. And during the past 20 years, the GNP in that country has more than tripled. So really, if the people in Africa want to bring an end to their massive poverty, they really ought to consider adopting the ideas of private property rights and economic liberty.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote his book "The Population Bomb." In this book, he said that the earth had too many people. He also said that as the human population got bigger and bigger, all sorts of horrible problems would occur. He predicted massive famine and starvation all over the world, even in the United States! Supposedly, according to Ehrlich, before the 20th century was over, there would be millions and millions of starvation deaths in the United States. He also said that we would run out of oil, and that there would be shortages of many other resources.

Ehrlich is a biologist. He studies animal populations. If an animal population grows unchecked, then it eventually outstrips its food supply, and the result is massive starvation. Ehrlich said that this would eventually happen with humans. Ehrlich said that it was only a matter of a decade or two until this mass human starvation would occur.

Well, it is now 1999. So far, all of his predictions of eminant doom have failed to occur. And, in fact, when one looks around, one sees that, in fact, the EXACT OPPOSITE has occured. Average food production, PER PERSON, is now higher than ever before! And people now own MORE MATERIAL POSSESSIONS than ever before!

And that's not all. Stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart are packed with more things than ever before. Homes are now bigger than ever before. People have more cars now than ever before. The prices of resources like iron and copper are lower now than ever before, indicating that the supply of these resources has gone up.

Ehrlich assumed that humans would outsrip their resources, just like other animals do. But humans are not like other animals. Humans have the ability to create new resources through technological innovation. Humans have already invented the technology to grow food indoors, so the amount of land available is no longer a limiting factor to food production. For example, you could build a 100 story building, and you could grow food on every floor. There is no limit to how much food we could grow, or to how many people we could feed.

OK. So what about third world places like Africa, India, and Bangladesh? What about the hunger and poverty in these places? Well, according to Ehrlich, these places are poor becasue they have too many people. But Ehrlich is wrong!

Third world countries are poor not becasue they have too many people, but instead, becasue they have government policies that do not permit the existance of free markets. If third world countries want to improve their standard of living, then they should adopt free market economices.

According to Ehrlich, Africa is poor because it has too many people. But 100 years ago, Africa had a much smaller population than it does today. And even then, it was still poor. Furthermore, if 90% of the people in Africa were to suddenly disappear, then the remaining 10% would NOT see any increase in their standard of living.

And to further show how wrong Ehrlich is, Africa is actually very rich in natural resources! I studied geology in college, and Africa is possibly, in terms of natural resources, the single richest continent in the world. So, for Ehrlich to say that Africa is poor because it lacks natural resources is simply absurd.

I also happen to know a lot about Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the most densely populated country in the world. But the people there are certainly not starving. How does Ehrlich account for this?

Simply put, there is no relationship between population density and hunger.

Everything in this book is wrong.

And you know what is really weird? Even though Ehrlich was completely wrong in his predictions, he is still writing other books today where he keeps saying that there are too many people in the world! I think that Ehrlich's TRUE motive is that deep inside, he has a very deep hatred for the human race, and deep inside, he WISHES that millions of people in the United States would starve to death.

By now, late 2007, one can hope that the anti-Ehrlich voices have gotten fewer in number. Our skyrocketing world population should be recognized by everyone as partly or largely responsible for many of our recent worldwide social crises and environmental disasters - global warming, the widespread water shortages, the disappearing arctic ice sheets, the global fish shortage, the extinction of the great apes, the exhaustion of ancient aquifers, uncontrolled urban sprawl, mega-cities, mega-slums, mega-smog, monster hurricanes and typhoons, unprecedented wildfires, disappearing wilderness, longer commutes, massive traffic jams, massive illegal immigrations, multi-millions of refugees, various genocides, etc., etc.

Here is the basic history of the overpopulation problem, a history that most people are shockingly ignorant of (and kept ignorant of by the powers that be). The entire human population of the world at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth, that is, in the 1st centuries B.C. and A.D., was only about 300 million. (It had been merely 10 million in about 10,000 B.C.). It then grew slowly to about 1 billion by 1850. Then, due to the Industrial Revolution, better sanitation, and modern medicine, it grew very fast to 2 billion by 1930. Then superfast to 3 billion already by 1950 (WWII, with its 55 million dead, was a minor pothole in the road), then very fast again to 4 billion by 1975. Let's skip the whiz-by dates for the 5 and 6 billion figures. We are now, in 2007, approaching 7 billion and will reach it within a few more years. By 2050, according to almost all projections, we humans will number 9-10 billion. Most projections I have seen deceptively stop there in 2050, as if that magical year will suddenly cause all couples throughout the world to stop having any more than 2 or 3 children, without even thinking about the subject. Alas, history and human population will not so conveniently stop. The latter will keep growing until it comes to a horrific halt, and long before that halt the majority of people will live in crowded misery and daily hunger, unless action in the form of worldwide public policy (incentives and penalties to keep population limited) is taken very soon.

Surely most people, if they don't recognize that the world has an overpopulation problem now, would accept the idea that eventually we will have one. If 6.5 billion people are not too many for them, the prospect of 16 billion should be. Or finally 60 billion, assuming they can count (which may be assuming a lot, in some cases).

Paul Ehrlich's understandably frightened 1967 perspective looked out upon the U.S. Baby Boom, that 20-year population explosion 1946-64, when couples had big, healthy families in prosperous times. By 1967, the U.S. population had grown from 150 million to 200 million within a mere 20 years. That growth was phenomenal - but worrisome. And while our U.S. population was reaching its worrisome milestone of 200 million, India reached its own scary milestone of 500 million (today it seems so quaint, merely 500 million in India). The entire world population in the late 1960s was rapidly approaching 4 billion, and truly responsible people like Ehrlich were reflecting on the implications of it all.

Ehrlich's critics rarely if ever acknowledge that his working statistics were taken from the years preceding 1967, when India, for example, was on the brink of mass starvation. The Green/Food Revolution, which prevented (postponed by some decades?) Ehrlich's dire predictions of catastrophic starvation from coming true, actually began, very belatedly, in 1966. India first imported the remarkable dwarf wheat seeds, specially bred by Norman Borlaug, in 1966. Those seeds arrived not one moment too soon. Ehrlich briefly and hopefully alludes to them in his book, but he finished writing it in 1967, and it was published in early 1968, before that new technology's beneficial effects were confirmed.

In any case, the Green/Food Revolution that started in the late 1960s has since exacted a heavy toll on soil fertility and other resources. The extensive use of water and fertilizers and pesticides also demanded by that technology has depleted precious aquifers and poisoned vast amounts of farmland. India is now once again in dire shape, as are many other countries. Up to a billion people in the world go to bed hungry or malnourished every night.

In 1960 (just yesterday), the population of India was 443 million; by 1970, only ten years later, it was 553 million; by 1980, 684 million; by 1990, 838 million; by 2000, 1 billion; and now, in 2007, it approaches 1.2 billion. Isn't it obvious where this awful Juggernaut is heading? Toward the rapid meltdown and starvation of India soon (and disastrous side-effects for many other nations), all because the people of India persist in having 3, 4, 5 or more babies per couple.

Ehrlich's critics (pro-growth capitalists, weak-kneed liberals, religious fundamentalists) have criticized him for a few predictions he made (on a few pages of his book) that did not come true. But those predictions were prevented from coming (immediately) true not only due to the (temporary) effects of the Green/Food Revolution, but also due to the success of the very movement Ehrlich helped to lead, a conscious effort to slow population growth. In the USA and much of the rest of the developed world, native population growth slowed considerably thereafter, partly due to people taking heed of Ehrlich's cautionary book. Legalized abortion and the Pill have also prevented many hundreds of millions of births around the world. In 1979, China instituted its famous "one child only" policy. It has caused serious social problems in China, but has prevented far more horrendous problems in China and the rest of the world. Without that policy, China today would have 400 million more people than it actually does. China today has a terrible system of sweatshop labor - virtual slave labor. But imagine the extent of the problem if China had 400 million more people to feed, in addition to its current 1.3 billion.

Another point: Does anyone believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict and all the other ethnic conflicts around the world will be peacefully resolved by the people in those warring regions having more and more children, creating more and more crowded conditions?

71% of the earth's surface is covered with water and is thus uninhabitable. Of the 29% that is land, the great majority of it is insect-infested jungle, oven-like desert, sub-arctic tundra, or desolate mountain ranges, all uninhabitable in the long term for any but a few hardy people. If some of Ehrlich's many comfortable critics would kindly volunteer to play pioneer for a decade in the Yukon, the Congo, the Sahara, or the high Andes, as role models to us all of the glorious adaptability of humankind and the wonderful possibilities of modern technology, one could be more sympathetic toward their views, or at least respect their sincerity. Not until then.