Customer Reviews

The Population Bomb (A Sierra Club-Ballantine Book)

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I read the Population Bomb when it first came out, and believed it. Paul Ehrlich envisioned a horrific future with mass starvation of millions, if not billions of people by 1995. As we now know, Ehrlich was a Malthusian of the worst order, and almost single-handedly gave environmentalists a bad name. He is the epitome of an alarmist who has significantly harmed the ability of reasonable environmentalists to be taken seriously (The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome). I'm sure Dr. Ehrlich meant well, but boy, was he wrong. This book should rest in peace, never to be read again. Or, perhaps it could be read as a lesson learned in how to avoid making extremist statements that make you and your colleagues look stupid.

Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born 1932) is an American biologist (specializing in butterflies) at Stanford University, who is a prominent ecologist and demographer.

It is popular to discount Ehrlich, and particularly this book (which begins with the stark prediction that "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines---hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now"). It should be noted that he has substantially revised his predictions in later books such as The Population Explosion, Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future, etc.

(It should also be noted that he admittedly lost his 1980 bet with conservative economist Julian Simon, about the trend of prices for certain metals.)

To be sure, his tone in this book was unduly "alarmist"; and his proposal to create a "stable optimum population size for the United States" (Pg. 135) certainly didn't anticipate the dramatic "Green Revolution" increases in agricultural production that would happen in the 1970s and later. His recommendation for "Proselytizing Friends and Associates" (e.g., praising childless people for their "selfless devotion to mankind" on pg. 185; telling families with two children that "two is plenty") seems almost ludicrous, in light of decreasing birth rates, later marriage dates, etc. His appeal to a variant of Pascal's Wager in the last chapter ("In other words, play it safe. If I'm right, we will save the world. If I'm wrong, people will still be better fed...") likely leaves us shaking our heads.

However, a "reality check" is in order. People ARE starving in the world---the Sub-Saharan African countries, India, etc.---and population control is definitely a part of the solution in such areas.

Ehrlich's book is still worth a read to gain "perspective"---but his later books are more useful, and they need to be balanced by also reading people like Julian Simon.

This is a classic book, and actually foretells
alot of the problems we have in the world today. A must read for
college students or anyone with an interest in our world.
Highly recommended.

I was required to read this pap in high school. I'm astonished this book could even be in print. It is the height of hubris of a tenured professor. I wonder if those people giving it a positive review are bothered by every prediction being wrong or even know who Malthus was. It is a sad indictment of our educational institutions that they fail to teach students to acually think. Instead they regurgitate disproven ideas by the likes of Malthus, Keynes and Ehrlich. I recall seeing a Time Magazine list of the worst books of the 20th century and this book made it.

In 1980 economist Julian Simons made a $1000 bet with Ehrlich. They picked precious metals and Ehlich bet in 10 years the price would go up vs down. At the end of 10 years Ehrlich wrote a check for more than $400 which the victor promptly framed and hung on his wall. Of course being tenured Ehrlich need not be right. Today he is an oracle for anthropogenic global warming, another discredited whacky idea. Read this book if you want to experience an intellectual moron or have read everything from Stephen King and like cheesy horror. In closing, it was a really lousy thing for my duluded teacher to have me under a cloud of dread for years. Had she instead directed me to read Malthus it would have been easy to see he was historically wrong. Paul Erlich has made a career of being wrong and scaring people. This book is a bad joke!

A seminal Work, circa 1971, still current and relevant. Should be a Kindle offering.

Sorry, Mr Gallagher, I disagree with your review of The Population Bomb, which I find to be a useful book.

It is my opinion that if the US had continued to pursue the policies of conservation and alternative energy of the 1970s (engendered by the OPEC gas shortage) in this country (and other industrialized states)
that the world would be much better off while dealing with the starvation, disease, and war that Malthus predicted as controlling the world's population, and that we are encountering in the 21st century.

Personally, I see your review as shortsighted.

Hopefully, our govt and other industrialized states will return to the conservation and alternative fuel policies of the 70s (emphasizing oil shale, coal, wind, solar and water created energy--ethanol IMO is just a short term artificial solution to the fuel supply that takes food away from the starving masses)

Population limiting programs like in China, would be beneficial to 3rd world countries and the ability of world supply to meet world demand. (The population of industrialized nations has already been voluntarily limited).

With global warming making the cracking sound of ice melting at both poles,
it seems that even if we stave off starvation and scare resources,
our behavior is going to catch up with us.
No more technical fixes like ?:
1) improved oil exploration and well use
2) super-grains
3) more efficient light bulbs
The attacking on the SST airplane in this book was really unnecessary?The limits to Growth is another book from this era that talked about the same sort of problems.
There has lately been a rice price panic: it appears that
the doomsday clock is still ticking strongly.
He might have improved this by making it less of a dumbed down
"popular" book and more graphs and equations for populations
and biological competition, but he at least covered what needed to be covered.