This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” The book catapulted Ehrlich to superstardom among the world’s scientists, and remains one of the all-time science bestsellers.
Yet the past 50 years of knowledge and human development have proven the book to be fundamentally false. See here.
“Ehrlich prophesied that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s (and that 65 million of them would be Americans), that already-overpopulated India was doomed, and that most probably “England will not exist in the year 2000.”
As a cure, Ehrlich recommended expanding the powers of world governments to control populations. Sterilization, forced abortions, and one-child policies were a few of Ehrlich’s recommendations. Governments such as that of China subscribed to and adopted Ehrlich’s claims.
Thomas D. Williams writes that “The enduring power of alarmist theories such as Ehrlich’s, which somehow survive being exposed as utterly false, should give people pause before embracing similar theories and their practical corollaries, even when based on ‘settled science.'”
